


Mirror Work

by Ayehli



Series: Mirror Work [1]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-11-20 00:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11324985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayehli/pseuds/Ayehli
Summary: Sarah gets more than she bargained for when her therapist insists she start having conversations with her mirror. JxS inspired by the amazing work of Subtilior and Pika-la-Cynique. Upped the rating to M for later chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

"Say it. Say it. For fuck's sake, just say it."

_You don't actually have to say it. You can just tell her that you said it. You're an actress, aren't you?_

"I can't lie to that woman. She sees through it, but she doesn't scold me and then I just feel worse."

_Suit yourself. Just get this over with, then._

Sarah gripped the edges of the bathroom sink, her eyes passing over her roommate's spartan collection of toiletries and her own messy pile of stage makeup and costume jewelry. Julia had been not-so-subtly suggesting that she organize that stuff for weeks. Now would be a good time to—

_You're stalling._

Sarah groaned and forced herself to look in the mirror. Her hostile face stared back at her, cheeks slightly flushed, hair pulled back in a messy bun, a few strands hanging loosely around her cheeks, chest heaving somewhat dramatically in a much-loved tank top that probably should have been thrown away years ago.

"Right. Here we go." She stood up straight and took a deep breath, then released it, forming her face into what she hoped was a good approximation of sincerity. She forced her lightly-rouged lips into a smile and tried to make the smile meet her eyes. "I really…want to learn…to love you." She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. "Sarah."

She felt bile come up into her throat. She spat into the sink and turned own the faucet, rinsing her mouth out vigorously. She looked in the mirror again and saw a face completely suffused with disgust, all traces of sincerity gone.

"This is utter bullshit."

_Yes, but it's bullshit that will get you a bit of extra cash from Dad and Karen every month to help cover the rent that waitressing doesn't cover, so you're going to grit your teeth and bear it, you spoiled child._

"I don't actually have to do the 'homework,' I could just—"

_We've already determined that that doesn't work. Acting is one thing, outright lying is another. Say the damn words. Two more times, like the book says._

"Hell, at least if I lied to Karen and her damn therapist I'd be doing some real acting, not just auditioning for Corpse #3 on the crime drama of the week or rehearsing for pretentious basement plays that no one watches."

_Whine, whine, whine. Two more times._

Sarah slammed her fist against the sink, knocking a rhinestone broach onto the floor. She stared at herself with wild eyes and took a deep breath. "I really want to learn to love you Sarah I really want to learn to love you Sarah. Fine, we're fucking done. Happy?"

She reached out and pressed her palm against the glass, still breathing heavily. It wasn't just that this was annoying and New Agey and everything she had ever rolled her eyes at, it was somehow deeply, deeply sad to be alone in an apartment talking to her own reflection. She wasn't so much angry at the words as the mirror that reflected only her, only the mundane world of her apartment, where once it had reflected…other things.

Sarah shook her head, palm still pressed against the mirror as though trying to reach for something through the glass. Stop it. That way lies madness, and you know it.

But she couldn't help it. Images flashed across her mind of happier times, of what she used to see in the mirror, of that connection to a world that she never knew how much she would miss until it just vanished one day, and all her mirrors became useless glass.

"It's not f—"

_Shut up. Shut. Up._

Sarah groaned. "Fine, put all that in the damn journal you're supposed to write. Minus the part about mirrors being a gateway to other worlds, of c—"

She gasped and pulled her hand back from the mirror as if stung. She stared at her palm, then back at the mirror, which reflected only the bathroom and her own face, slightly pale.

For a split second, the mirror had felt warm.

Naturally Julia chose exactly that moment to come home. Sarah wiped her palm on her jeans and busied herself with the pile of make-up and costume jewelry, grabbing a few sheets of toilet paper to scrub away weeks' worth of grime for good measure.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Julia looked, as always, perfectly put together. Her hair was cut and styled where Sarah's was messy, her clothes pressed where Sarah's were wrinkled, her expression calm and in control where Sarah always felt wrong-footed. She smiled a smile that anyone else would have taken for genuine when she saw that Sarah was cleaning.

"Thanks for doing that." _Translation: you are on the cusp of homelessness. Don't push your luck._

"Yeah, you know." Sarah forced herself to laugh. "Long time coming, I'm sorry."

"No worries, I know you're busy." Julia glided away from the bathroom door toward a bedroom that Sarah knew did not have a week's worth of dirty clothes on the bed and a stack of unopened mail on the bureau. "Gonna clean up a little and meet Roger for dinner."

_Roger. Jesus, even your boyfriend sounds like an 80s movie villain._

Sarah made some noise of acknowledgment, listened to the sound of Julia's door closing, and quickly pressed her palm to the bathroom mirror again. As she expected, it was cold.

_But it wasn't before. It really wasn't. You're sober, you didn't imagine it._

Sarah sighed. Maybe they were just teasing her. Being surrounded by goblins all the time had to make you mischievous, right?

_But they were never like that before. They were kind. They listened._

_Yeah, and then one day they were just…gone._

She felt a tightness in her throat that hadn't been there in a while and shook her head as if it were something that could be dislodged. No point in this, no point at all.

"Right. Talking-into-the-mirror bullshit is done for the day, write down how transformative it's been and then get back to something more meaningful, like counting ceiling cracks."

_Or finish cleaning this sink so that your surely-has-homicide-on-her-mind roommate doesn't murder you in your sleep._

Sometimes procrastination made a lot of sense. Sarah rolled her eyes and went to get a plastic bag and a bottle of disinfectant.

Within the mirror, something chuckled.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: Thank you for the kudos! I have a map of this thing in my head, though who knows what sorts of detours it will take. Hoping to finish it in a dozen chapters or less, though. Rated T for the time being, though that may change.

I own none of Labyrinth's characters and gain no profit from this work, unless you count the occasional rush of giddy, fangirlish glee as profit.

**Chapter 2**  
  
Three days earlier, Sarah hadn’t known about mirror work. That had been a happier time.   
  
“I can tell you’re not thrilled about this.”  
  
She gave herself a mental slap for letting her smile-mask slip so easily. Then again, what her therapist was suggesting sounded like torture.  
  
She tried to bring the color back into her cheeks. “I’m open to anything.”  
  
The woman in front of her smiled. Sarah had come to know that smile well over the past few weeks—it was the one that said she knew Sarah was lying, but also that calling her out on the lying wouldn’t help.   
  
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said.  
  
Her therapist’s name was Rebecca, which had immediately made Sarah think of Gothic romances and well-dressed, pale women sequestered in mansions, but this Rebecca was nothing like that. She wore little glasses and had a short, boyish haircut. She was fit and dressed in clothes that were plain without being drab. Her office bookshelves were lined with the usual go-to therapy staples—books by Freud and Jung and others with titles like The Dance of Anger and How to Speak Your Spouse’s Language, but also a nice collection of fiction and history, which Sarah had immediately noticed. She was sincere, but she also wasn’t above sarcasm.  
  
By the end of their first session Sarah was horrified to discover that she liked Rebecca. Those warm feelings were currently being tested, though.  
  
“Uh, just one question.” Sarah cleared her throat and tried to sound nonchalant. “Does it have to be mirrors?”  
  
Rebecca cocked her head slightly. “As opposed to…?”  
  
“Like…couldn’t I just talk to myself, in my bedroom or something? Do I actually have to look into a mirror?  
  
“Sarah, do you have a problem with mirrors?”  
  
 _Oh, boy._   
  
“I just…” _Be honest, she’ll respond to that._ “I guess I’m kind of self-conscious. Sure, I look in mirrors all the time to fix my hair and do make-up and stuff, but I don’t like the idea of staring at my own reflection. You know, ‘staring too long into the abyss’ and all that.”  
  
Rebecca’s mouth twitched. “You think of your own reflection as a Nietzschean abyss?”  
  
“No.” _Shit_. “Just…have you ever stared into your own eyes for a really long time? It’s a little freaky.”  
  
“Yes, it is.” Rebecca leaned back and linked her fingers together. “Sarah, I understand your hesitation, but mirror work is supposed to be a little scary. It forces you to confront the things you keep hidden, say aloud the things you might be afraid to say. There’s no hiding from a mirror.”  
  
 _Tell me about it._   
  
“And yes, the mirror is kind of necessary. You can try to do the work without it, but I just don’t think it’ll have the same effect. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it gets results, so I’m a little wary of tampering with the formula.” She shrugged her shoulders almost apologetically. “Can I just ask you to try it for a week? If it’s genuinely upsetting for you then of course we won’t continue. But I really think it would help…with everything we’ve been covering.”   
  
Sarah sighed. It was very, very hard to say no to this woman. Which must be one of the reasons Karen had practically dragged Sarah into her office.   
  
“Right. I’ll try to be a good student.” Sarah forced herself to smile.  
  
Rebecca smiled back. Damn, she was likeable. “Write whatever responses come up in your journal. Even things like ‘this is bullshit and I hate it.’”  
  
 _You know me too well._   
  
_____________  
  
A few hours after the incident with her bathroom mirror, Sarah was crouched on stage under a man in a very realistic-looking rhino costume. The actor, Joshua, was hanging about six feet off the ground, suspended from wires rigged (safely, Sarah prayed, though you never knew with these basement theaters) through exposed pipes in the ceiling.  
  
Sarah was surrounded by four other actors in black shirts and trousers. They all held large arrows in their hands. Priya lay on her back, Lena was doing an almost-split, Miguel was on his knees like Sarah, and Alec was squatting.  
  
“Let’s take it from cue 32,” came the director’s voice, somewhere in the house.  
  
“From 32,” came the stage manager’s voice.   
  
Miguel mouthed “Kill me” at Sarah, and she was about to mouth back “happy to oblige,” but then the sound cues began, a series of theremin-like noises, each a few seconds apart. As each sound cue finished each one of the actors reached up with an arrow and mock-stabbed the man in the suspended rhino costume. When it was Sarah’s turn a drop of sweat fell out of the costume and landed on her forehead, and she gritted her teeth to keep her position and not wipe it away.  
  
“Dreams,” the rhino said, his voice muffled by the costume. “I watch the red chromosomes behind my eyes. Life goes on…and I’m dying.”  
  
Jaunty music played, and the rhino danced a little—as much as he was able to, being suspended by wires in a giant costume.   
  
“Right, thank you, moving on to the opening of the next scene.”  
  
Sarah collapsed on the floor and massaged her numb calves before wiping the drop of sweat off her forehead. There were quite a few more drops on the floor. Poor Joshua, stuck in that damn costume all evening.   
  
She headed back to the theater’s closet-sized green room with the rest of the ensemble, knowing that they likely wouldn’t be needed for at least another half-hour. Lena grabbed one of the sagging sofa seats and Alec grabbed the other. Priya massaged her shoulders and neck while Sarah sat next to Miguel on the floor.  
  
“He is totally making this up as he goes along,” Miguel whispered, though there was no covering up sound in that tiny room.  
  
Sarah laughed and then regretted it when she saw Lena’s expression. She could feel Miguel roll his eyes next to her.  
  
“Just because he doesn’t have a script doesn’t mean he’s making it up as he goes along,” Lena said, her too-pretty face staring Miguel down like knives.  
  
“Actually, I think that’s the definition of ‘making it up as you go along,’” Miguel countered, pulling a granola bar out of his pocket.  
  
Lena’s breathing quickened, and Sarah covered her mouth to keep from laughing. “It’s all in his mind. It’s impossible to put it on paper, it has to take form on stage first. He’s brilliant, he knows what he’s doing.” She pulled a book of monologues out of her bag, opened it, and stared fiercely at the page. “And you’re not supposed to eat in here. You know there’s a rat problem.”  
  
“Yeah, but there’ll be an angry human problem if I don’t eat something.” Miguel polished off his granola bar in two bites and stuffed the wrapper in his trouser pocket. He smiled at Sarah. “Keep me company while I smoke?”  
  
She smiled back. “I don’t smoke.”  
  
“I know. Just trying to be a bad influence.”   
  
“You succeeded at that a long time ago.”   
  
Miguel pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and headed for the rickety metal stairs that led to the aboveground world. Lena looked up from her monologue book.   
  
“We’re supposed to stay in the green room during—“  
  
“Five minutes, Lena, for God’s sake. It’s at least another half hour of monkey-rhino conversations before they need us again.”  
  
Lena opened her mouth to protest but for once thought better of it, letting her brown ringlets fall in front of her face as she turned her focus back to her book.  
  
Priya was snoozing and Alec was doing a very claustrophobic version of tai chi. Sarah tried to be productive during rehearsal down time, but this green room—and the play itself, she had to admit—had a way of sucking all the motivation out of her. She pulled a script out of her bag—she had a _Law & Order_ audition later that week, this time for an actual living, breathing role instead of the usual opening scene corpse.   
  
She could feel her head nodding over the script almost as soon as she began to read. As she drifted in and out of consciousness she noticed the green room’s dingy mirror with its border of caked-on grime, her tired face reflected in the bottom, knees drawn up to her chest. She looked tiny and frail.  
  
 _I really want to learn to love you, Sarah._   
  
She laughed out loud at the thought of babbling all those affirmations into the mirror here, in front of Priya and Alec and Lena. Actually Lena would probably eat it up, would love to give Sarah all kinds of advice about mindfulness and self-love.   
  
Her eyelids grew heavier, and she heard her own voice saying those dumb words. _I really want to learn to love you, Sarah. I really want to learn to love you, Sarah._  
  
The voice changed, becoming lower and strangely familiar.  
  
 _We really want to learn…Sarah…really…you…you…_  
  
The voice was soothing, even as the words ceased to make sense. Sarah slept.   
  
————————  
  
She woke up alone. The single bulb in the ceiling seemed dimmer than usual.  
  
 _Fuck, I’ve missed the cue, why didn’t these jerks wake me up, where’s Miguel—_  
  
Sarah paused. Something wasn’t right. The sofa cushions, shabby to begin with, looked positively ancient in the dim light. Her clothes—another tank top and a loose peasant skirt—seemed to be floating slightly, as if she were suspended in water. When she moved her hand across her field of vision it left a little trail of stars.  
  
 _Right, dreaming. Why can’t I dream of something more interesting than this dumpy green r—_  
  
She looked at the mirror and let out a tiny scream.  
  
“Still enjoying underground universes, I see.”   
  
He was lying on the mirror-sofa, which looked much grander than the one in the actual green room, his legs propped up on the arm, hair spilling over the cushions. He was holding Lena’s monologue book aloft and flipping through the pages.   
  
He seemed to shimmer in the mirror, though he was very much there, more so than everything else in this dream. He wore some version of what he had always been wearing: tight trousers (had they always been that tight?), ruffly shirt, that lethal-looking pendant, boots, a cape that spilled over the edge of the sofa. She recalled how ancient and massive he’d seemed to her ten years ago, where now he looked…still impressive, she had to admit, but…smaller. More human.   
  
He hadn’t aged. _Of course he hasn’t aged, you idiot. He’s not…well, he looks human, but he was never exactly real. Or at least not real in the manner of being born and living and aging and dying._  
  
“These speeches are terrible, by the way.” Jareth crossed and uncrossed his legs as he flipped through Lena’s book. “I hope you aren’t using this volume, though it might explain why you’ve had so little success with your auditions.”  
  
Sarah gave a short laugh that sounded like she was choking on something. _The Goblin King is in the green room…and he’s negging me._  
  
That shook her out of her stupor. “You. You were in my bathroom mirror.”  
  
Jareth closed the book and sat up, fixing her with flashing eyes and an amused smile. “Not in, Sarah. Mirrors aren’t like a genie’s lamp for my kind, I can’t live in them. But you could say I was passing through when I heard…what was it, exactly?” He stood up and walked toward her, placing one hand on the surface of the mirror as she had done. “‘I really want to learn to love you—“  
  
“Don’t.” She turned away from the mirror and clenched her fists. _You’re not fifteen anymore. You don’t get embarrassed by everything under the sun._  
  
He laughed. Damn, she remembered that laugh. “It broke my heart a little, really. Or it might have, if such things could happen. Do you really not love yourself, Sarah?”  
  
She whirled around and marched up to the mirror so that her face was inches from his. “None of this is real. It’s all a dream, you’re not really here, and I don’t have to explain my bullshit life to you.”  
  
He shook his head. “Tsk, tsk. Language, Sarah. Good to see that the ‘will is as strong as yours’ part is still true, though.” He tapped his fingers against the glass. “And yes, this may all be a dream…but your dreams have always been a trifle too real.”  
  
The mirror blurred where his fingers touched it, and as Sarah watched the surface parted like water. His black-gloved hand reached through the glass, trailing little flecks of light as it moved, and reached out to grip her chin before she could jump away.  
  
“Dreams aren’t so distant from the real, precious.” He smiled as she tried to pull away, but his grip held firm. “Even the ones you’ve tried very, very hard to forget.”  
  
He pushed his face through the mirror and kissed her.  
  
It wasn’t a kiss like any she’d ever experienced, not that she could call herself experienced. It was a flood of emotions and memories and sensations rushing through her lips and along her veins and into her head and the tips of her fingers and toes, a tingling cascade of pieces of her short history that alternately filled her with longing, rage, grief, lust, disdain, and ecstasy. Her mother’s first approving words about a performance. The day she came home to find that her mother had moved out and left her a note. The day her father introduced her to Karen. Joking with Miguel and his husband in their tiny apartment. The taste of a peach and Hoggle’s haunted expression. Seeing Toby’s empty crib. Her bags packed, standing on the doorstep of her home. Mediocre sex her freshman year of college with a boy she didn’t really like, and then mind-blowing sex with one she did, but who never called again. The day that Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus stopped appearing in her mirror. Toby staring up at her with a love that made her heart feel like it would burst.   
  
She felt dizzy and drunk. _How long…how long since I’ve felt anything this deeply?_   
  
Jareth moved his lips to her cheek, and Sarah heard herself whimper as the sensations vanished abruptly, ripped away like a bandage on a raw wound. “Indeed, precious,” he whispered. “How long?”  
  
She felt the room begin to blur, felt the substantialness of his lips and fingers become air and the tugging weight of her own body on the floor in that distant, real-world room.  
  
“Why now?” Her voice sounded fractured and faint. “Why are you here now?”  
  
He smiled as his face seemed to crack and disintegrate in front of her. “Sometimes mirrors listen.”   
  
“I don’t…you…”  
  
“Hush. Your mysteries always sort themselves out. Now get back to work, if that’s what you call this.” His last words sounded shouted through a rushing wind. “And for the love of Goblindom, acquire some better audition material if you wish to be paid for performing.”  
  
When she opened her eyes Miguel was coming down the stairs into the green room, Priya was awake, Lena was still reading her book, and Alec was napping.   
  
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” Miguel’s smile faltered when he saw her face. “You okay? You’re paler than usual.”  
  
Sarah forced herself to smile. Her lips were still tingling. “I’m fine.”  
  
Miguel reached down to ruffle her hair. _Mom used to do that._ “You sure?”  
  
“Yeah.” She stood up and made a show of stretching her limbs. The memories were already fading, but they left a residue, a sweet aftertaste that she definitely wanted more of. “Just a few ghosts.”   
  



	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3  
  
 _Mirror Work Journal, Day 1_  
  
“I said the words. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I practice monologues in front of the mirror all the time, but I’ve never actually talked to myself in the mirror. It kind of made me feel sick.”  
  
Sarah’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. _How honest do I have to be in this thing? Rebecca didn’t say she would read it, but still…_  
  
She drained the cup of coffee on her desk—her third one in as many hours—and began typing again.  
  
“Sure, I don’t love myself very much. But does anyone? Isn’t going around talking about how much you love yourself kind of…annoying?”   
  
She smirked. _I bet Jareth loves himself. A lot._  
  
She shook her head vigorously. Thoughts of Jareth meant thoughts of that kiss, and all those very deep feelings that she definitely wanted to feel again, wanted badly enough to be cause for concern. Which might explain why she’d barely slept at all last night and had spent her one weekly day off from her waitressing job desperately trying to stay awake, anxious about what she might see if she fell asleep again.  
  
“Anyway, I don’t like this and I think it’s kind of stupid, but Rebecca seems sane, even if she did come recommended by Karen. So I’ll keep saying the damn words and writing in this damn journal, but I don’t know if I’ll be looking into a mirror again anytime soon, because there’s someone in there waiting for me who is all kinds of trouble and memory that I don’t need right now.”   
  
She deleted that last part, wrote it again, and deleted it again. She heard a knock on her bedroom door and jumped.   
  
“Sarah?” Julia opened the door a crack. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…wow.”   
  
Julia hadn’t spent more than thirty seconds in Sarah’s bedroom since they’d become roommates, but even so, Sarah imagined the transformation must have been shocking. The pile of dirty clothes on the bed was gone. The bed itself was made, with pillows and Lancelot (whom Toby had given back to her after he declared himself too old for stuffed animals) positioned on top. Books were arranged neatly on the shelves. The wood floor looked spotless.   
  
Julia looked relieved and more than a little unnerved. “You…cleaned.”  
  
Sarah smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been keeping busy.” _Cleaning as if my life depended on it, you could say._   
  
Julia nodded, continuing to take in the room until her eyes settled on the full-length mirror on Sarah’s wall, which was now covered with a dark-colored shawl. “Just one thing,” Julia said, and Sarah could tell that she was trying very hard to be polite. “Is there a reason all the mirrors in the apartment are covered?”  
  
“Oh.” She hadn’t considered the fact that this might seem odd to someone who wasn’t expecting strangers to appear in their mirrors. And occasionally step out of them. “I’m sorry, I’ll take the covers off, it’s just—“  
  
“Oh! Are you sitting shiva? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“  
  
“No!” _Dammit, that would have been a very rational explanation. But a very bad idea in the long run, considering all the research you’d have to do about Jewish mourning customs._ “No, it’s not that, I just…” _Hate my reflection? Want to experiment with freeform makeup styles?_ “The play is opening tomorrow night, and it’s just something I do before a performance, you know…try to look inward and not focus so much on my appearance.”  
  
“I see.” Julia smiled. “Well, that makes sense, but is it okay if I take the covers off occasionally? It’s hard to fix my hair if I can’t see myself.”  
  
“Of course, I’ll take them down and I’ll just…wear dark sunglasses. Same effect.”   
  
“Thank you. Oh, and have a great opening night.”  
  
“Thanks. I’d offer you a free ticket but the show’s terrible.”  
  
Julia chuckled and closed the door behind her.   
  
Sarah glanced at the clock on her desk. It was only five pm, and there was no rehearsal tonight—the director wanted everyone “refreshed” for opening night. No work, either. She would have to sleep eventually, but if she could make it a few more hours maybe she’d be so exhausted that she wouldn’t dream.   
  
She texted Miguel. _Any plans?_ He texted back a few minutes later. _Sorry, date night with Nick, been a while with all the rehearsals._ _You okay?_   She was tempted to spill everything, but she already worried that Miguel saw her more as a pity project than as a friend he’d known since college, so she simply wrote _Yeah, all good, gonna watch TV and crash._  
  
Sarah stood up and paced her bedroom, feeling a strange mix of utter exhaustion in her limbs and caffeinated hyper-altertness. _You could watch a movie. You could bake. You could go for a jog._  
  
 _You could just check and see if anything’s lurking in your mirror._   
  
Sarah rolled her eyes. What exactly was it that the Goblin King had given her? It was nothing she hadn’t seen or thought of before, though admittedly some of those memories hadn’t been touched in a long time. But what she’d felt…that had been different.   
  
These days when she felt something deeply it was usually rage. It was what had landed her in Rebecca’s office in the first place—one too many shouting matches with her father and Karen. And though she would argue—and had, quite loudly—that anger was a perfectly justified response to certain situations, even she admitted that it had gotten out of hand.  
  
But other emotions…no. Not so much anymore.  
  
 _Which is remarkable, really. You used to cry during soap operas. And you thought nothing would ever give you more joy than that music box you got for your birthday. Why’d you stop feeling things? Especially when it clearly gives you a lot of pleasure?_  
  
“Well, it was pleasurable because someone with a very nice face was kissing me.”  
  
 _Yeah, but that wasn’t all of it._  
  
She rolled her eyes and continued to pace. _There are other ways to achieve deep feelings, you know. You could get drunk. You could listen to angsty music. You could open your phone and be naked with someone in a few hours._   
  
Somehow all of those seemed like a very poor substitute for what she’d experienced the day before.  
  
Of course the shawl covering her desk mirror chose exactly that moment to slip just slightly off the edges, revealing a glint of reflection underneath.  
  
Sarah put her hands on her hips. _Did you do that, Jareth?_   
  
She pushed the shawl a little more to the side and it fell completely off the mirror. She covered her eyes, expecting to see strange things staring back at her, but there was nothing. Just her own face,  hair somewhat mussed, dark circles under her eyes.  
  
Unable to stop herself, she reached out and touched the mirror. It was cold. She got up to confirm that Julia was in her own room and far out of earshot, then sat down in front of the mirror again.   
  
“Hello?”  
  
No answer.  
  
“Is anyone in there? Do I have to…’say my right words,’ or something?”  
  
As if in response, a page in the open book on her desk fluttered slightly. Sarah sighed.  
  
“You have got to be kidding me.”  
  
The page seemed to flutter again.  
  
“Fine. Tit for tat, I suppose—you watch me humiliate myself and I get a fix of raw emotion.” Sarah flipped the pages back to the beginning of the book and stared at herself in the mirror.  
  
“I really want to learn to love you, Sarah.”  
  
She winced at the sound of the words. Nothing happened. She tried for more sincerity.  
  
“I really, really want to learn to love you, Sarah.”   
  
Still nothing. Maybe because you’ve already done that one? Try the second one.   
  
She flipped a few pages forward and groaned. “Dear Lord, it gets worse.” She kept one finger on the page and looked into the mirror again. “Past guilt…is a weight…weighing me down. I am willing to let go of past guilt.”  
  
The mirror shimmered slightly. Sarah reached out and touched it, it was warm. She gritted her teeth and said the words again.  
  
“Past guilt is a weight weighing me down. I am willing to let go of past guilt.”  
  
The mirror shimmered again, the reflection blurring and distorting and then re-shaping until she saw…  
  
Sarah gasped. It was her old bedroom, with the built-in shelves for her stuffed animals, the pictures of her mother all over the vanity mirror, the bed with the curtains and the patchwork quilt. The bed that the Goblin King was currently lounging on, hands behind his head, a bemused smile on his face.  
  
“I do like that one. Guilt as a weight, it’s very poetic. Such a fascinating concept, guilt.”  
  
Sarah crossed her arms. “I take it you’ve never felt it.”   
  
Jareth stretched as if he had just woken from a particularly pleasant nap. “I can’t say that I have. Which might be why it fascinates me so, the way mortals twist themselves into knots over a past that can’t be changed. Not being able to re-order time must be such a nuisance.” He turned to gaze at her, his smile like a blade. “You obviously know guilt intimately, Sarah, else you wouldn’t be here.”   
  
She felt her face flush. “I didn’t come here out of guilt. I came because…because…”  
  
He stood up and came close to the mirror, eyes suddenly alive and hungry. “Say your right words, precious.”  
  
Sarah snorted. “I already said the damn—“  
  
“Not those.” He pressed his hand against the glass. “Tell me why you’re here.”  
  
She stared into his eyes, felt the hunger radiating off of him, and pressed her hand against his. Immediately she felt a tingle, a faint echo of what she’d felt the day before, and she closed her eyes at the rush.  
  
“I’m here because…I need something from you.”  
  
Jareth closed his eyes and gave a small sigh of pleasure. His face seemed to glow slightly, the very subtle lines at the edges of his eyes and mouth smoothing, his hair gleaming more brightly.  
  
“Thank you, precious.” The mirror shimmered and his fingers pushed through it to entwine with hers. “This will only hurt for a moment.”  
  
“Wait, wha—“  
  
He pulled her through the mirror. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and comments! Sorry to leave on a cliffhanger (or mirror-dangler, as it were). Chapter 4 is mostly done but is a bit longer than the others, so I'm taking a little more time to get it where I want it, but it'll be up soon.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4  
  
It hurt for longer than a moment.  
  
Sarah opened her eyes and immediately sensed that her body was in a strange position, her limbs stiff and jutting out at odd angles. She could vaguely make out her old bedroom around her and felt that she was on the bed, but when she tried to move her arms and legs resisted, as if they’d been dipped in cement that had hardened. She tried to speak but all that escaped was a low moan.  
  
“Be patient.” Jareth’s voice was maddeningly nonchalant, almost bored. “It wears off. Try moving your fingers first.”  
  
Sarah unleashed a torrent of the foulest curses she could think of—or tried to. The result was just another moan, this one slightly louder and more agitated.  
  
Jareth sighed. “Move your fingers, Sarah.”  
  
It was remarkable how strong the desire was to resist him, just out of spite. But if she wasn’t able to move soon, she wouldn’t be able to strangle him. And maybe leave some scratches on his perfect face.  
  
She moved her fingers and felt a slight, tingly response. She tried again and was able to coax her hand into a fist.  
  
“Now your toes.”  
  
Infuriated that she couldn’t roll her eyes yet, Sarah obeyed and felt her feet responding. She straightened one leg and gasped at the ache in her joints.  
  
“Keep going. Your voice will be the last thing to recover, by the way.” She could practically feel him smirking. “I assure you that’s purely a coincidence.”  
  
When Sarah was finally able to turn her neck she saw that Jareth was seated at her vanity mirror reading her copy of _Outside Over There._ She pulled herself up into a seated position on her bed, trying to ignore the shooting pains in almost every single joint in her body. She opened her mouth to speak but found that her throat was still raw.  
  
“I must say, this young lady is a lot more noble than the girls who usually end up in my labyrinth,” Jareth said, flipping a page of the book. “She doesn’t wish her baby sister away, the poor moppet just gets taken by goblins, which seems highly unfair. There are rules, after all, even I’m allowed to bend them as I see f—“  
  
Sarah launched herself at the Goblin King and knocked him out of the chair onto the floor. Her hands went for his throat, but her movements were still sluggish, and all she succeeded in doing was pawing his neck inelegantly.  
  
He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her cheek. She shivered in spite of herself. “If you wanted to play, Sarah, you could have just asked. No, I’m sorry, that’s not fair, your voice isn’t fully recovered yet. Still…” He glanced down at her hands, which were still digging awkwardly at his chest and neck as though they were moving through water. “Your technique could use some polishing.”  
  
Her voice was a croak. “What…did you… _do_ to me?”  
  
Jareth casually pushed her off of him and sat her up against her bed. “You needed something from me.  It was easier for me to give it to you here. Thus I brought you here. I decided that the unfortunate side effects were a reasonable cost.”  
  
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Her voice was recovering quickly, possibly helped by anger. “Do you frequently make unilateral decisions about other people’s bodies?”  
  
The look he gave her was genuinely surprised. “I am a king, Sarah.”  
  
She sighed. “You couldn’t have asked? Just a basic, ‘Sarah, do you mind if I drag you into an alternate space and time and wreak temporary havoc on your limbs?’”  
  
He considered this. “Yes, I suppose I could have asked. But you have a tendency to overthink everything, Sarah, and then neither of us would have gotten what we wanted.”  
  
Sarah groaned and managed to stand up—her limbs were a bit wobbly, but they at least seemed to be working again. “I’m assuming there’s a way for me to get back? I’ve got a play opening tomorrow night, you know—“  
  
“Yes, I’m aware of your creative obligations, and “creative” certainly seems an apt term for that collection of purple prose and ill-formed latex costuming that you’re a part of.”  
  
Sarah grimaced and then felt ridiculous. Hadn’t she just told Julia that the play was terrible?  
  
Jareth adjusted his clothes and hair slightly where they’d been rumpled in the fall. “You’ll be home before the stroke of midnight, dearest. Plenty of time to enjoy the ball.”  
  
“If you think I’m going anywhere near another one of your peaches—“  
  
“Yes, yes, we’ve established that you’re outraged by my behavior. Outrage…almost as fascinating as guilt, really. Mortals do love to wallow in indignation.” Jareth produced a crystal from the air and idly tossed it from hand to hand. “Based on the fact that we’re in this room, though, I’d wager you’re not so interested in ballroom peach dreams at the moment.”  
  
Sarah took in the entirety of the room for the first time and realized that while it was definitely her childhood bedroom, something was…wrong. Not the way that the green room had been wrong in her dream, but just slightly different. _Unhomely_ , her sophomore English lit professor might have called it.  
  
The whole room smelled vaguely of smoke, as if a fire had just been put out. The books on the shelves were positioned at odd angles. The wallpaper seemed to be peeling. There was a layer of grime covering the pictures of her mother and Jeremy on the vanity mirror. And on the floor…  
  
Sarah cried out. The small figures of Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus lay at her feet, but they were broken—Hoggle’s metal form bent and twisted, Ludo and Didymus’s stuffed bodies torn, the white stuffing scattered.  
  
Sarah felt like she was looking at a murder scene. She knelt on the floor and gingerly picked up pieces of cloth, stuffing, and metal, with the faint hope that, given the not-quite-real nature of this place behind the mirror, she could magically fuse the pieces together. And that in doing so the real Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus would be before her, thrilled to see her again.  
  
But of course that didn’t happen, and as she cradled the broken figures she felt a sick weight in her stomach, her mind dancing dangerously close to a memory that she hadn’t revisited in a very long time.  
  
Jareth regarded her silently from across the room. Sarah stroked the feather from Didymus’s hat.  
  
“They just stopped coming. They were there in the mirror, whenever I needed them, and they were happy to see me. And then one day when I called they weren’t there anymore.”  
  
She heard Jareth laugh and looked up in anger. “What’s so damn funny?”  
  
“Lie to yourself if you must, Sarah, but don’t lie to someone who can see inside you.”  
  
He produced another crystal, and Sarah could make out movement inside of it. She reached for it and he pulled it away.  
  
“What’s in there?”  
  
He spun the crystal around on the tip of his finger. “You need to feel something, precious. I believe this is a good place to start.”  
  
He held out the crystal to her, and Sarah was reminded of his other offers that she’d refused years before, refusals she’d known had been right at the time but had wondered about for a long time after. She eyed the crystal warily.  
  
He held it closer to her face. “I’m not offering this one in exchange for your brother, Sarah. Just look.”  
  
Sarah looked. The image inside seemed to fill her field of vision like a film screen.  
  
She saw her bedroom in a state of disarray, large bags on the floor, the built-in shelves empty of their stuffed animals. She and Rachel (I always said I would get in touch with her and I never did, why didn’t I) were sorting things into different piles. Rachel wore tight jeans and a crop top and had permed hair with large hoop earrings. Sarah’s younger self was dressed in a way that she now recognized as having one foot in childhood and one foot in semi-adulthood: hair still long and cascading over her shoulders, dangly bracelets on her wrists, cutoff jean shorts and a v-neck shirt that hugged her curves. Her lips were glossed a light pink, but she wore no other make-up. Rachel wore thick eyeliner, bright red lipstick, and bright red blush.  
  
Rachel was sorting through books. She held up the same copy of _Outside Over There_ that Jareth had been reading earlier.  
  
“Keep, toss, donate?”  
  
The younger Sarah looked at the pile of books. “All of those can go in the donate pile. Actually…” She grabbed her copy of _Where the Wild Things Are_. “I’ll keep this one for Toby.”  
  
Rachel laughed. “You give that kid everything.”  
  
Younger Sarah didn’t meet her friend’s gaze. “He’s a good kid.”  
  
Sarah heard Jareth chuckle and gave him a dirty look. He sighed and went to stand by the window, letting her have the vision to herself, though she knew he’d seen it all before.  
  
Rachel moved to a pile of stuffed animals. Sarah saw Lancelot on top. “I’m guessing these are for him as well?”  
  
“Just the bear.” Younger Sarah sorted through them briefly, her fingers resting for a second longer on Didymus, Ludo, and the firey before quickly moving them into a bag.  
  
“This room is going to be so awesome when we’re done with it,” Rachel said, tossing a tinfoil tiara and a few pieces of worn-looking costume jewelry into a throwaway pile. Sarah chuckled with the knowledge that she’d re-purchase a lot of these things years later, when the desire to be grown-up faded a little. “I know this shop with great batiks, you can hang them on the walls, we can get rid of these curtains on the bed, they make it look sort of like a cradle…”  
  
Sarah watched herself listening with rapt attention to the friend who had always seemed so sophisticated and now seemed, like any teenager viewed by an adult, so very, very young. _Everything is ahead of us even though we think everything’s behind us._  
  
After all the bags had been filled Rachel hoisted a few of them over her shoulder. “Shall we stop by Goodwill first?”  
  
“Sure. I’ll be down in a minute, just need to see if I missed anything.”  
  
Rachel nodded and closed the door, and Sarah watched her teenage self change when her friend left the room. Her eyes looked slightly haunted. She sat down on her bed and then stood up again, pacing the room. She pulled several items out of a bag, held them to her chest, and put them back in the bag.  
  
She went and sat in front of the vanity mirror and opened the drawers. Slowly, carefully, she pulled out pictures and clippings of her mother and spread them out on the desk. She ran her fingers over each one. Finally, she reached deep into the back of the side drawer and pulled out the red book.  
  
Sarah ran her fingers over the crystal as if she could reach in and touch the girl inside.  
  
That girl clutched the book and the photos to her chest and crumpled into herself, her body shaking, hair falling in a dark curtain over her face. She seemed to stay in that position for a very long time, though Sarah knew that it couldn’t have been very long.  
  
And then the vanity mirror shimmered slightly, and Sarah gasped to see Ludo and Didymus and Hoggle there, their eyes full of concern.  
  
Ludo was the first to speak. “Sarah…need?”  
  
Didymus pushed himself to the front. “Verily, my lady! Your steadfast companions were concerned for your well-being, as we had not been summoned in quite some time.”  
  
The younger Sarah’s head snapped up like a whip. She backed away from the mirror, dropping the photos and the book on the floor.  
  
Hoggle put his hands on his hips, eyeing her tear-streaked face. “Somebody been hurtin’ you, Sarah?”  
  
_No_. The adult Sarah closed her eyes. _You little fool, don’t—_  
  
“I didn’t call you.”  
  
The younger Sarah was staring at the mirror with a stony expression. Hoggle and Ludo looked immediately taken aback, but Didymus marched obliviously onward.  
  
“Tis true, my lady, thou didst not use words, but thy need spoke to us from thy heart—“  
  
“I didn’t need you.” Younger Sarah was clenching her fists. “I don’t need you. Any of you.”  
  
Didymus’s eternally can-do expression seemed to wilt off of his face. Ludo gave a gasp of surprise, and Hoggle crossed his arms.  
  
“Well, it ain’t like we got nothin’ else to do around here. Just thought you could use some friends right now, what with—“  
  
She turned her back on the mirror, and Sarah saw tears begin to flow freely down her cheeks, though she worked hard to keep her voice neutral. “Go away.”  
  
Sarah couldn’t bear to look at them, Ludo with his expression of utter confusion, Didymus repeatedly starting to speak but then thinking better of it, Hoggle playing at anger when she knew how hurt he must have been.  
  
“You say them words again, you can’t take ‘em back.”  
  
The girl in the crystal shut her eyes tightly and bit her lip. “I don’t need you.”  
  
When she turned around to face the mirror, they were gone.  
  
She stood staring at the mirror for a long time, reaching toward it and then backing away, then reaching toward it again, still crying. After a few minutes a car horn honked from down below.  
  
The younger Sarah wiped her eyes quickly and knelt down to gather the photos and the red book that had fallen on the floor. She was about to put them back in the drawer and then paused, glancing between the desk and the bags on her bed.  
  
She closed her eyes, shook her head vigorously, and threw the book and the photos into a garbage bag.  
  
The image in the crystal faded. Sarah realized she was clutching it tightly and her palm was sweating. At some point she’d sunk to the floor next to her bed. Her arms fell limp at her sides, and the crystal rolled across the floor.  
  
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered.  
  
Jareth turned to regard her from the window. “Surely you know by now that that doesn’t change the consequences, Sarah.”  
  
“I was a child. I was stupid. Why didn’t they ever come back?”  
  
Jareth sighed. “Because you told the truth, though you could have been much less cruel about it.”  
  
“Cruel?” Sarah stood up, feeling her face grow hot. “Are _you_ seriously calling _me_ cruel?”  
  
“Yes. Because you were cruel, in that moment.” He smiled in a way that made her skin crawl.  
  
_How many times did you watch that little scene, I wonder?_  
  
She glared at him. “I was a child.”  
  
“You were old enough to know what you were doing.”  
  
“I was n—what the hell am I doing? Why am I defending myself to someone who takes pleasure in mortal pain? Sorry to spoil your midnight fantasies, Jareth, but my cruelty was a mistake. A one-off. For you it’s a goddamn _hobby_.”  
  
Jareth rolled his eyes. “I don’t take pleasure in mortal pain, Sarah. I find amusement in some varieties of it, it’s true. But there’s little joy in it. You cast me as evil when I’m mostly indifferent.”  
  
“Oh, that’s much better. That makes you supremely qualified to judge the actions of a teenage girl.”  
  
He reached out and touched her cheek, and she felt that tingling sensation again, as if a current were traveling back and forth between them. “It must have felt good, for a moment.”  
  
She slapped his hand away. “What?”  
  
“To genuinely believe that you needed no one.” He touched her cheek again, and the current felt stronger. “To feel powerful.”    
  
His eyes pierced hers and Sarah couldn’t look away from them. For once there was no smugness or exasperation in his expression.  
  
Sarah felt sick with the vividness of the memory. It _had_ felt good. And then it had felt horrible, and the momentary sense of being powerful hadn’t been worth it at all. The sick feeling spread from her stomach through her limbs and mixed with a deep, deep sadness that made her throat constrict and her eyes well up, and she felt both terrified and exhilarated at the thought of being swallowed by feeling for the first time in ages.  
  
It wouldn’t happen, though. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and threw it across the room, then pulled her own hair, then kicked the bed, cried out in pain, and sank down to the floor again. Jareth watched her curiously for a moment and then sat down next to her.  
  
She started to punch the bedframe and Jareth grabbed her wrist. She punched with her other hand and he grabbed that one too, pinning both arms against the side of her bed. She cried out in frustration.  
  
“What do you care if I punch my knuckles bloody?”  
  
He gripped her wrists more tightly, and she winced. “If it’s physical pain that you need, Sarah, say so.”  
  
She groaned. It wasn’t what she needed at all, and he knew it. She took a deep breath.  
  
“Help me. Please.”  
  
Jareth sighed and let go of her arms. “I can’t bring them back, Sarah, you said the words—“  
  
“No, not that.” She ran a hand through her hair. He would make this difficult. “Look, I don’t know exactly how this works, I just know that you need to be needed and grant people’s wishes and I need to _feel_ and something about you…touching me makes me able to feel, and if I can’t feel anything after watching what I just watched then I might as well be dead, so yes, I’ll say the words again, I need you.” She heard his sharp intake of breath and felt warmth radiating from him. “I need you to help me feel something other than rage. Please.”  
  
Jareth reached for her and then pulled away. “I believe you said something regarding unilateral decisions about mortal bodies—“  
  
“Just fucking kiss me, Jareth.”  
  
His lips were on hers before she’d finished saying his name, hungry and forceful, his fingers gripping the sides of her face and twining through her hair. She felt a rush of heat and an ache that was familiar, but also something else, a sense of something opening up and releasing a trickle of feeling that quickly became a flood, and as he kissed her lips and cheeks and throat and his hands took in more of her she felt her vast reserves of anger momentarily overtaken by something else. It was a feeling that hurt, but it was a sweet kind of hurt, like something from childhood that she’d missed and thought she might never feel again, and she could feel how much she’d needed it and feel him drinking in that need, and then she was crying, real tears and real sobs that shook her body, and he let her go and she shook and wept for a long time on the floor.  
  
She didn’t know how long she stayed there, but at some point her tears were dry and her throat felt parched, but there was a strange lightness in her limbs that hadn’t been there before. She stood up and caught her reflection in the vanity mirror, and for a split second she looked like a teenager again, staring into an empty mirror and regretting the words she’d spoken to Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus almost as much as she’d regretted wishing Toby away.  
  
She reached out and touched the mirror’s surface. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was cruel. I’m sorry.”  
  
Jareth cocked his head at her. “They can’t hear you.”  
  
Sarah sighed. “Yes, genius, I’m aware of that.” She touched the mirror’s surface again. “It still helps.”  
  
He smiled and shook his head. “Fascinating.”  
  
She shrugged. “Lots of people talk to people who aren’t there.”  
  
“Yes, but you’re still—.” He looked away and produced another crystal, moving it from hand to hand. “It’s still fascinating.”  
  
Sarah watched him sitting in the windowsill, moving the crystal deftly through his fingers. He had a slight glow about him, a bit of color in his cheeks, not as much darkness under his eyes. He still radiated aloofness, but he was also pointedly avoiding her gaze.  
  
_Can’t say he has no power over me…but maybe I have just a little over him._  
  
Sarah could see movement inside the crystal he was playing with. “Do I want to know what’s in that one?”  
  
He smiled.“Another time, precious. Now I believe we should return you to the other side of the mirror in time for that great theatrical catastrophe that only the mad and your closest relations will be willing to sit through.”  
  
Sarah snorted. “It’s not that bad.”  
  
“I have read goblin poetry and watched fireys perform musical versions of classic tragedies. It is most definitely that bad, Sarah.”  
  
“Fine, fine. So how do I get back home? Can I maybe just…carefully crawl through the mirror this time?“  
  
Jareth adjusted his gloves. “I’m afraid not.”  
  
Sarah blinked. “What do you—“  
  
He moved with alarming speed, his hands gripping her shoulders and lifting her off the ground, and she screamed as she felt herself hurtling straight for the mirror…

* * *

  
  
Sarah opened her eyes to find herself yet again curled into a strange position and unable to move. She was in her own bedroom in her own apartment, at least. The clock on her bedside table showed that it was just a few minutes after five pm.  
  
Everything hurt again. She heard herself moan.  
  
_You are so dead, Goblin King._  
  
Sarah wiggled her fingers and prayed that Julia wouldn’t choose this moment to knock on her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for the comments and the kudos, they are very much appreciated! Chapter 5 coming soon!


	5. Chapter 5

On stage under punishingly hot lights the following evening, Sarah tried desperately not to nod off in the play's final scene.

She'd actually slept better than she had in ages, even with all the residual aches and pains that two trips through a mirror had given her. She had been utterly exhausted, which helped, and her sleep had been dreamless. When she woke up the next morning she felt as if she'd been sleeping for years and had awakened feeling renewed, even if the world itself felt slightly unfamiliar.

Now, though, she struggled to stay awake out of the sheer boredom that the play induced. In the final scene the rhino was talking on the phone to someone about a dream he'd had. Half of this play was characters describing their dreams. And their dreams were invariably long, senseless, and boring—no Goblin Kings showing up in mirrors, no unexpected kisses that made you weak in the knees. These were dreams about random assortments of events and images that the writer-director had apparently thought were meaningful.

Sarah was depressed that the audience seemed to agree. Contrary to Jareth's predictions, it was not only the mad and the cast's closest relations who came out to see the show—the basement was packed. It was ridiculous—she was in this show, it was good exposure, she should want it to succeed—but she was saddened by the fact that so many people seemed taken in by what she knew to be a big pile of nothing.

The rhino's monologue was winding down. She forced herself not to look at Miguel, knowing that he would do something would send her into a fit of giggles. When the lights finally went down and the applause began, she uttered an inaudible "thank God" before she got into position for the curtain call.

The cast gathered with the audience on the street near the entrance to the theater. Sarah hadn't invited anyone to the show—Karen and her father and Toby knew about it and had offered to come, but she'd told them not to bother. Miguel's husband Nick was there, being as adorably supportive as ever. Lena was wrapped in the arms of a scruffy-looking rock star type who stared at her like she was the only person on earth. Alec was chatting with a group of friends, and Priya was holding her daughter while her husband chased their son around. Joshua, who'd thankfully taken the time to change out of his sweat-soaked underclothes, was fielding questions from people who were amazed that he'd been able to do much of anything in that costume. Sarah lingered near different groups of people, occasionally nodding and smiling when they acknowledged her or told her they liked the show.

_Stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you'd wanted people to come you should have invited them._

She couldn't believe how much everyone had seemed to enjoy the play. _There was no script_ , she wanted to shout. _Miguel was right, he totally made it up as he went along._

Maybe she was crazy, or just didn't appreciate great art. Maybe the play really was brilliant, and she just couldn't see it.

Thankfully Miguel was there to dispel that madness quickly. He dragged her over to where Nick was chatting with the stage manager and whispered in her ear.

"These people are all _fucking insane_ ," he said. "If you don't come get a drink with me and remind me how awful this show is I think I might lose my mind."

Sarah smiled at him with genuine warmth and relief and then glanced at Nick. "Don't you have a hot bath and rose petals waiting for you at home or something?"

"Nick has to be up early tomorrow with the rest of the corporate drones. You and I, however, are sensible enough to not schedule early shifts the day after an opening night." He squeezed her arm and kissed her forehead. "One drink. Maybe two. I'll have you home by midnight, princess."

Sarah blinked. "What did you say?"

"That I'd have you home by midnight. Unless you're in a true pretend-we're-still-eighteen, tearing up the town mood."

She relaxed."One drink. You're on."

* * *

Three very strong drinks and several lengthy rants about the play later, Sarah was feeling happier than she'd felt in quite a while. They were at Three Dogs, the tiny underground bar around the corner from Sarah's apartment that served bowls of hot peanuts still in the shell and hadn't yet been overrun by hipsters. They had reached that point in the evening where they were tossing peanuts across the table into each other's mouths, trying not to hit the bar's low ceiling.

Miguel smiled at her and ordered another beer. "You look good," he said.

She put her hand over her mouth in mock shyness. "Why monsieur, how forward of you!"

"I mean you look better," he said, words slurring only a little. "You've been…I don't know, sad. For a while now."

Sarah took another swig of the very potent (but thankfully cheap) cocktail that was the bar's signature. A voice in the back of her head warned her not to get carried away with the drunk sharing. "Thank you. You know, therapy. It's stupid, but it kind of helps."

"The lady that Karen recommended? Is she teaching you how to clothe your inner child and stuff?" Miguel laughed a little too loudly at his own joke.

Sarah laughed along with him. "No, better. She's making me talk to my mirror."

"Oh God, please tell me that you're talking about how you're smart enough and good enough and doggone it people like you."

"Yes. Totally." She paused. "And it actually brought back a memory…of this time that I was really horrible to some of the only people in the world who I could trust…and I told them I was sorry, even though I knew they couldn't hear me. And I cried a lot, and it felt good, because I hadn't cried in a long time."

The room suddenly seemed quiet, even though they were surrounded by people. She had never told anyone about that—not even a version of the story that left out the fact that Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus weren't exactly of this world. She felt her eyes welling up.

"Oh, sweetie." Miguel slid around to the other side of the table and put his arm around her. "That's heavy."

She rested her head against him. "Yeah, it was. But I'm feeling better now." She smiled, feeling the cocktail's effects rather strongly. "And then I had a dream about a hot guy."

He leaned back and stared at her gleefully. "Please tell me he had a buzz cut, lots of tattoos, and wore a wrestling singlet?"

She laughed. "No, no, and no. Tall. Lean. Blonde." She felt herself blushing. "Somewhat androgynous. Funny eyes. Very, very good kisser."

Miguel snorted. "A hundred miles away from my type, but I'm glad you got some action, at least in a dream. It's been _way_ too long."

"We just kissed."

Miguel's mouth dropped in mock horror. "Just kissed?"

"Yeah, and the kiss…made me cry. For a long time. Which felt really good."

Miguel shook his head. "Sarah, honey, you clearly don't know how to do the sexy dream thing properly. You did nothing but _kiss_? And then you _cried_?"

Sarah shrugged. "It worked for me." She drained her glass. "And the best part..." She felt herself dissolving into the best kind of drunken giggles, because it suddenly seemed hilarious. "He's a _goblin king_."

Miguel found this equally hilarious. "This gets better and better. You made out with a _goblin_ in your dreams?"

"No, no, no, he's _human_ , but he's a king of goblins. And he's _beautiful_."

"Not beautiful enough to do more than kiss and sob over, apparently."

She punched his shoulder playfully. "A girl has to play _somewhat_ hard to get."

"Whatever. You're looking much better, but you clearly need a dose of naked playtime. All of this," he gestured from her head to her feet, "is so tragically being wasted right now." Dramatically, he placed one hand on her head and spoke in a low, theatrical voice. "Goblin King, Goblin King, my dear friend Sarah needs—"

Sarah's hand shot out to cover Miguel's mouth. "Shhhhh! He'll _hear_ you!"

Miguel laughed. "Yes, have to be careful of dream-men listening in on—" He paused when he saw that she looked genuinely worried. "Sarah?"

Sarah shook her head and forced herself to laugh. "Yes. The dream men are aaaalways lissstening…"

Miguel took a hearty swig of beer, and Sarah let out a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. _Well, technically it would have been him 'saying the words' and not me, but still. Not taking any chances._

_It would also have been a convenient exc—_

_Whoa, whoa. Where the hell did that come from, drunk brain?_

"And besides," she added, "I am not so desperate that I have to beg dream-people to shag me."

"Of course not, but dream-shags are great. No awkward conversations in the morning, no fear of pregnancy or STD's, and no sheets to wash."

She smiled a rather lopsided smile at him. "You have a point."

"Indeed. And I love you." He clinked his glass with hers. "To the worst play ever, and to two people who deserve much better."

She smiled, the effects of the alcohol mixing with a pure sense of contentment that she felt, for the first time in a while, quite deeply.

* * *

Sarah stumbled into her apartment at around two a.m., careful even in her far-from-sober state not to make any noise that would wake Julia. She went into her bedroom and turned on the light, winced at the brightness, turned it off, stripped off her clothes and pulled on an oversized T-shirt that happened to be laying on her desk chair, and was about to collapse into bed before she glanced at the mirror.

There was nothing in it except her own reflection, barely visible in the darkness. She reached out and touched it.

"I really, really, want to learn…how to…lovvve you, Sarah." She dissolved into giggles as she said her own name. "But I gotta say, right now, I am at least liking you. Maybe it's the cocktails. Or, you know, being able to say sorry to Hoggle and Ludo and Didymus. And make sense of some stuff. Which…" She paused, wobbling just a bit on her feet. "That was kind of nice of him, really. I mean, clearly he got something out of it, but still…"

She leaned somewhat clumsily against the mirror and kissed its surface. "Thanks for that, Jareth."

Sarah turned back to bed and then turned around again, noticing her shawl still lying on her desk. She picked it up and draped it carefully over the mirror.

"Just in case you have a creepy watch-girls-sleep thing going on."

Sarah fell into bed and couldn't resist pointing a wagging finger at the mirror one last time before she drifted off. "And I'm still mad at you for _throwing me through a mirror._ "

She was sleeping a dreamless sleep almost immediately. The shawl over the mirror might have ruffled slightly some time later, but she never noticed.

* * *

The buzzing of her phone woke her up long before she'd planned to get out of bed. As her hand groped blindly for the offending device she wondered who in the world could possibly be calling her at this hour—not Karen or her father, they knew better, not Miguel, he'd be sleeping off his hangover as well, so who—

The screen showed the name of her agency. _Really? Calling me before nine a.m. to offer me another Corpse #3 audition?_

She cleared her throat but still managed to sound fairly wretched when she squeaked "Hello?" into the phone.

"Sarah, honey, it's Liz. Sorry to call you so early, but it's kind of important."

Sarah clutched her head, which throbbed slightly harder at the sound of Liz's somewhat nasal voice. "No problem. I've got the _Law & Order_ audition on my calendar, been reading the script—"

"Actually I've got something better. Ever hear of Lori Meeker?"

Sarah's ears pricked. "Of course, who hasn't? Two directing Obies in two years, youngest writer-director to do that—"

"Good girl, doing your homework. Well, apparently she saw something she liked in you and she wants you to audition for her new show."

Sarah blinked. _Saw something she liked in me? When could she have…oh wow._

"Uh…she saw me in the play last night? And she _liked_ it?"

Liz laughed. Sarah could hear her shuffling papers as she talked. "She made a few colorful comments about the play, but you, it seems, she liked. Advantage of being in shitty work, hon, sometimes you shine all the brighter."

Sarah barely heard her. _Somebody saw me and liked what they saw. That feels…huh. Very, very good_.

She realized that Liz was still talking. "…script by tomorrow morning, and your audition is scheduled for Wednesday night."

"My audition? Like, it's not a cattle call?"

"Nope, individual meetings. You've struck minor gold, Sarah, even if it is off-Broadway. I'll happily take all the credit when you get your Obie nomination."

She laughed. "If you can negotiate a living wage for me then I'm happy to let you take all the credit."

"You know I will. Gotta go, show them your best side and let me know how it goes."

Sarah put her phone down on her bedside table, barely noticing her hangover symptoms. She resisted the urge to get up and do a little jig, fairly sure that that might bring them back.

She glanced at the mirror with her shawl still hanging over it and felt a sudden pang of uncertainty. _Was this…had he…_

Sarah shook her head. _No. You didn't express any need for this, and since when has the Goblin King done nice things for anyone without demanding babies or dreams in return?_

She showered quickly and changed into jeans and a t-shirt—her shift started in half an hour. She left the bed unmade, last night's clothes on the floor, and felt herself dancing slightly toward the door.

* * *

"You seem to be feeling good."

Sarah smiled. "I'm sure I'll find a way to fix that soon."

Rebecca smirked. "You're deflecting with humor again."

"Yeah, I know." She sighed. "Sorry, this whole 'feeling good' thing is new to me, not quite sure how to talk about it."

"Well, why don't you tell me why you're feeling good?"

Sarah folded her hands and recounted her carefully constructed free-of-magical-mirrors version of the last few days."And then I found out I landed a really good audition, which, like, _never_ happens for me, and for once I felt like I could take all the credit. So, yeah."

Rebecca smiled. When she didn't ask another question, Sarah kept speaking.

"So…all the mirror stuff is still weird, but it's been a big help. Thank you."

Rebecca nodded. "I'm glad the exercises are having a positive effect, Sarah. This is a good start."

Sarah's smile faltered slightly. "A good start?"

"Yes. There's a lot more that I think we should cover, but this is a very good start."

"Right." The tingle of uneasiness she'd felt began to spread. "Exactly what else do we need to cover, besides all my issues with not liking myself very much and getting mad all the time?"

"Well…everything beneath that."

"Oh. Like…subconscious things, repressed stuff."

Rebecca smiled. "Maybe. The process varies from person to person." Rebecca leaned forward slightly. "And I'd just like to stress again that I won't force you to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. I won't even push you to continue coming here, if it's not something you want to do."

 _Yeah, but I need the money from Dad and Karen._ That thought made her feel childlike and helpless again, and the warm glow she'd been feeling from earlier began to trickle away.

"That said, if you're up for it, I'd like to move on to some other topics. Like your mother."

Sarah froze. "What?"

"Your mother. We haven't talked about her at all yet."

The room seemed to have gone very quiet. Sarah hooked and unhooked her fingers, multiple protests beginning on her lips and dying before they could be spoken.

Rebecca picked up on the change immediately. Her voice was gentle. "What's your relationship with your mother like, Sarah?"

Sarah's body responded before her words could, in several ways at once. She felt a tightness in her chest, a flush in her cheeks, felt her hands clenching, and a chill that seemed to travel from her cheeks down over her chest and into her stomach. Snippets of memory danced through her mind, some faded, some much clearer than she wanted them to be.

And in that instant she knew exactly what was lurking in the crystal ball Jareth had been looking into before he threw her through the mirror.

Rebecca leaned back, mercifully aware of when to back off. "If you're not comfortable, Sarah—"

Sarah rose abruptly from the sofa. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just realized that I told my boss I'd come in an hour early today, to help with…something. Is it all right if I leave a little early?"

Rebecca stood. Her eyes never left Sarah's. It was a neat trick, being able to meet people's eyes all the time—she really should work on it.

"Sarah, we don't have to talk about anything that you don't want to talk about."

"Thank you. I'm sorry, I just…I just really need to go."

"Of course." Rebecca reached across her to open the door. "I'll have my assistant call to set up your next appointment, all right?"

"Sure."

Sarah practically ran out of the office, closing the door behind her to lean against the wall in the thankfully empty hallway. She let out a long, slow breath and closed her eyes, pushing away the images and sounds that raced through her mind.

When the panic subsided she felt angry. _Gee, what else is new?_ Angry that her feelings of security were so precarious, that she could be so easily undone just by the mention of her mother.

_Not just the mention of her, of course. It's what Rebecca might suggest that you do, what well-meaning friends and boyfriends have suggested that you do, when they don't know the half of it…_

Sarah thrust her hands in her pockets, pulled them out again, and walked toward the elevator. She wanted to leave this place and never go back into Rebecca's office again. But she needed the money from her father and Karen. No, maybe if she got this part in the play that would be enough…no, not likely…

Sarah let out a little cry of frustration and slammed her fists against one wall, then the other, wishing for all the world that she were searching for an opening in a seemingly impenetrable maze instead of trying to untangle the knots of her past.

* * *

The rhino-monkey dream play thankfully had a very short run, only five performances. By Sunday it was all over, and Sarah made awkward small talk at the cast and crew party, thankful to have Miguel with her as a sort of beacon of sanity amidst a group of people who genuinely seemed to think that they'd participated in a moment of great art.

She went through the motions of her _Law & Order_ audition, which didn’t feel so different from her previous corpse auditions, even if this time she actually got to speak.  Liz called her later to say she hadn't gotten the part, and Sarah actually felt relieved. Spending all day on a set to only speak one line was depressing, even if it was a paycheck.

She threw herself into preparing for her Lori Meeker audition to try to forget, at least momentarily, about Rebecca and the mirror and everything attached to both of them.

The script was called _The Retreat_ , and it was wonderful, as Sarah had known it would be. She'd gone to see Lori Meeker's last play with Miguel and they'd both swooned and dreamed about starring in one of her shows. Miguel was now pretending to be furious at her for "stealing" his dream, though he was also texting her regular messages of support.

She dove deep into the mind of her potential role, a young wife and mother in a cult-like religion whose world is turned upside down when her husband announces that he's leaving the church. It felt good to pretend to be someone else, especially someone whose life seemed so distant from her own.

She ignored the call from Rebecca's office to schedule her next appointment. She knew she couldn't do that forever—Karen or her father would call, she was sure Rebecca was at least letting them know whether or not she was attending sessions, even if ethically she couldn't share what they were talking about. For now, though, she simply couldn't bring herself to walk into Rebecca's office and start down a long road that could end in a face-to-face meeting with her mother, however long and circuitous that road might be.

She didn't speak to the mirror, and she was careful not to express or even _feel_ any sort of deep need so as to avoid unplanned meetings with the Goblin King. She knew what was waiting for her in his crystal, and she didn't want to look at it. At least not yet.

But then, the day before her audition, she came home to find an envelope in the mailbox.

It was pale blue with flowers around the edges, small, and smelling faintly of lavender. Sarah thought for a moment that it might be a gift from one of the distant relatives who occasionally wrote to her (and she felt guilty at how much she hoped there was a check inside). But then she saw the return address.

Her palms began to sweat. It had been three years since the last one, the first one she hadn't replied to. She had waited for another one to come, or even a text or a phone call, despite the fact that she knew her mother abhorred phone calls and digital communication. None had come, and she'd been left feeling like a fifteen-year-old again, slamming the door in her father's face but feeling infuriated and hurt when he didn't try harder to talk to her.

The feelings had cooled over time. Sarah was amazed to realize that she hadn't really thought of her mother much at all until Rebecca had brought her up, or earlier, in that dizzying moment when Jareth had first kissed her and she had remembered so many buried things.

She carried the letter into her bedroom and placed in on her desk. The thought of opening it made her feel ill, but she knew uncertainty would eat at her until she did.

The worst part, actually, was the tiny flame of hope that the letter inspired. The idea that there was something magical inside it that would erase everything that had come before.

It was that stubborn hope that made her rip open the envelope and unfold the letter inside, scanning the words hurriedly as though lingering on them too long might burn her eyes.

Nothing, of course. There was nothing in the letter that changed anything. No apology, no questions about Sarah. Just a long stream of words about auditions, a new boyfriend, needing more money…

Sarah threw the letter against the mirror, angry at herself for yet again being drawn into a trap of her own making.

_How can someone who's been absent for so long have so much power over me?_

It had to stop, she realized. This constant looking over her shoulder, constant waiting for something that was never going to materialise. And in order for that to happen, she was going to have to look the past full in the face.

"I need to let her go."

The mirror seemed to shimmer slightly. Taking a deep breath, she touched the surface and said it again. "I need to let her go."

There was no response from the mirror, but the pages of the damn book fluttered. Sarah groaned.

"You are clearly enjoying this."

She flipped ahead several pages. "Right, there's got to be something appropriate here…here we go." She faced the mirror and made her face as sincere as possible. "All human beings are worthy of love. I love myself, and I deserve to be loved by others." She winced, both at the ridiculous sound of the words and at the fact that she really, really didn't believe them at the moment. "All human beings are worthy of love. I love myself, and I deserve to be loved by others."

The mirror surface seemed to liquify as it had before, and Sarah was no longer shocked to find herself facing a vision of her childhood home. For some reason this time it wasn't her bedroom—it was the entryway that faced the large staircase. Jareth was standing in front of the stairs with his back to her. His dark leather clothing and wild hair looked strangely…faded, like an image photographed in sepia.

"I would argue that not all mortals are worthy of love," he said quietly.

Sarah sighed. "Kinda with you on that one."

There was a long silence. "You've been hiding," he finally said.

"Yeah." She felt her hackles rise. "I just—maybe I didn't feel like getting yanked or thrown through a mirror."

"Ever predictable," he sighed. "I expend great effort doing what's best for you and you are supremely ungrateful."

"For Christ's sake, why is it so hard for you to understand the concept of _asking_? And…damn it, will you turn around and look at me?"

She thought that his body tensed slightly before he slowly turned around to face her. She gasped.

His face looked gaunt. The space under his eyes was sunken and grey, and she could see streaks of grey in his hair. His body was thinner than usual, clothes hanging off of him much more than they normally would.

He half-smiled at the shock on her face. "Oh, dear Sarah." His voice dripped with a level of contempt that had been mostly absent the last time she'd seen him. "Am I not the vision you remembered?"

She backed away from the mirror slightly, stung. "What…what happened to you?"

Jareth smirked. " _You_ happened, precious. Or rather, a distinct lack of you, and your fellow mortals with needs, happened to me. King I may be, but I am also at the mercy of humanity's petty desires and its willingness to speak them aloud."

He spat each word like a curse, and Sarah suddenly felt very young and vulnerable again, and foolish for offering him a doorway into her world.

_When will you learn not to play with fire?_

He saw the fear in her eyes and grinned wider. "Afraid, precious? Not so eager for kisses from a dying animal with its claws out?"

Sarah's breath caught. "You're…dying?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, you silly girl, I'm _not_ dying, and that, as they say, is the rub. I will never die, no matter how much mortal need and wishing is withheld from me. I will simply diminish further and further, reduced to begging for words of need like a street urchin. Death would be a blessing."

She was horrified at that image, of the idea of endlessly losing more and more of herself but seeing no final death at the end of it all. Without thinking she reached out and touched the mirror. "That's…I…"

He snarled at her and slapped at the mirror, and she jumped back as her fingers seemed to burn. "Don't look at me that way, Sarah. I won't be pitied."

"I wasn't—all right, I was, but NOT because you're pitiful, Jareth, but just because it's horrible, and I…I know a little about what it's like."

His laugh was raw. "Do you, now? You know the sensation of being beholden to mortal whims, reduced again and again to a shadow of yourself through neglect?"

"Yes." Sarah was shocked to realize that it was true. She took a cautious step toward the mirror and reached out, stopping just shy of touching it. "I…" She swallowed. "I know what it's like…to feel that you aren't needed. To feel useless." She laughed. "I think it's kind of central to the human condition, actually."

He folded his arms, looking slightly more intrigued than enraged. "Enlighten me."

"We all need, all the time, but we can't admit to it, and we all love to feel needed, but other people won't admit that they need us, so we drive ourselves crazy pretending that we don't need anything or anyone and it diminishes all of us."

Jareth stared at her. "That is absolute, complete, and utter madness. I have no choice in my lot, but mortals do—and yet they choose pain, again and again."

Sarah shrugged. "Hey, if we were sensible you wouldn't have nearly as much fun feeling superior to us."

He laughed, and she sensed some of the bitterness draining out of him, though his next words were still wry. "Regardless, I am here now, summoned by your magical book—"

"Right, my bullshit self-help book has magical powers. It's not just a bit of fun on your part to get me to say ridiculous things into a mirror."

Jareth smiled and folded his arms. "Perhaps a bit of both."

"Anyway, I…" She looked away. "I need something from you."

His eyes lit up, but then he grimaced. "I'm going to need a little more conviction from you, Sarah, if you want this to work."

She nodded and took a deep breath, pressing her hand against the mirror. He pressed his hand against hers, and she felt a very faint warmth. Her eyes met his.

"I need something from you."

The warmth became a more intense heat, and as she watched a tiny bit of color seemed to return to Jareth's cheeks. His eyes never left her face as his fingers pierced the mirror's surface and entwined with hers. "Tell me what you need."

"I need to…let go of something. I need to look at something I've been hiding from."

More color in his cheeks, more luster in his hair, though he still looked frighteningly gaunt. He smiled and started to pull her hand, and then paused.

"Shall I…" He cleared his throat, obviously struggling a bit with the words. " _May_ I bring you through the mirror and cause you very temporary discomfort, for a purpose that will ultimately be to your benefit?"

She gave a short laugh and nodded. "Yes."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Thanks as always for the kudos and the comments! This thing will definitely get finished, it's all mapped out and should be tied up in another three or four chapters.


	6. Chapter 6

  
As Sarah lay curled on the cushioned bench near the staircase and the effects that she had come to think of as “mirror lag” wore off, Jareth kept up a running commentary on the family pictures that lined the walls.  
  
“Young Toby looks thin. If only he’d remained in my kingdom, he’d likely have enjoyed a much richer diet. And fresher air.”  
  
Sarah tried to snap back something about the fact that Toby would also have been turned into a goblin, and that Jareth didn’t seem to be overly fond of goblins, but her words were barely intelligible.  
  
“Happy to hear that you agree with me, precious. The less contrary side of you reveals itself so infrequently.” He moved on to another picture. “Ah, and this one may truly be a miracle, an image of young Sarah, and she is smiling, looking for all the world like she is not planning to unleash a torrent of vitriol onto whoever might cross her path…”  
  
Sarah pulled herself into a sitting position. “My parents told me we could get ice cream afterward if I smiled in the family photo,” she croaked.  
  
“Ice cream! Clearly what I should have offered you, instead of dreams.”  
  
“In exchange for my brother? Sorry, not much of a trade.”  
  
“That would depend on the ice cream.”  
  
She rolled her eyes at him and managed to stand up, steadying herself against the wall with one hand. The entryway of her home looked much as it always had, with only a few off-kilter details—the photos seemed to hang slightly crooked on the walls, the rug floated a bit above the floor, and through the windows Sarah could see only blackness outside. This time the gateway appeared to be the large mirror that hung across from the staircase ( _maybe, just_ maybe _he’ll let me walk through that one instead of being thrown, she thought idly_ ). There was no smell of smoke, though, and no grime.  
  
“Why are we here instead of in my childhood bedroom?”  
  
Jareth gave an elaborate shrug. “You’re shaping these spaces to fit your needs, Sarah. Mortals do love to deal in symbols, and if I were to wager a guess, I would say that the memories you’re currently preoccupied with represent a sort of limbo between childhood and independence. A time when you still clung to home, but you also couldn’t wait to escape it. Hence the entryway—still home, but with one foot in the adult realm.”  
  
Sarah stared at him. “That’s…wow. That’s quite deep.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow, clearly pleased. “I’ve had quite a few lifetimes to think about these things. Sadly, the goblins don’t really have the attention span for my long-winded pontifications on mortal symbolism.”  
  
She smiled. “That’s a shame.”  
  
“Quite.”  
  
Silence stretched between them, not unfriendly. Sarah knew what she needed to do, but that didn’t make it any easier.  
  
“I believe you…have a crystal for me.”  
  
Instead of producing it, he examined another one of the photos lining the staircase, running a gloved finger along the frame. “Is this really what you need, Sarah?”  
  
She nodded, though a large part of her wanted him to convince her otherwise. “Yes.”  
  
He produced a crystal from the air and wove it back and forth between his hands. “Perhaps my interpretive abilities are less advanced than I presumed, because…this caused you great pain the first time you experienced it. And yet you want to experience it again?”  
  
“What I did to Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus was painful, too. But seeing it again helped me.”  
  
“Yes, but…” Jareth looked for all the world as if he were trying to solve a particularly vexing mathematical equation. “In that case you were responsible for something, and you owned that responsibility. With this…there was no responsibility on your part.”  
  
“I know.” She found herself speaking more to herself than to him. “I just…I need to stop running from this. I need to remember things as they really were.”  
  
He breathed in deeply when she spoke of need, and more color returned to his face, more substance to his limbs. And then he grimaced again.  
  
“It is true that I relish your need, Sarah, but…” He met her eyes, and his expression was surprisingly fierce. “I take no pleasure in your pain.”  
  
She nodded and reached out slowly to touch the crystal, her hand resting over his. “I need this. I need to go back…to move forward.”  
  
He closed his eyes, and she felt the tingling energy travel between them. He released the crystal into her hand and turned away.

* * *

  
  
She saw herself get off the train at Grand Central Station, her long hair arranged neatly on top of her head, wearing clothes that she knew were meant to make her seem older than her almost-sixteen years: a blouse, a skirt, low heels, pearl earrings that she’d “borrowed” from Karen. She’d taken a lot of time to choose every piece.  
  
Her younger self stood in the middle of the station and tried to look calm, but Sarah remembered vividly how terrified she had been. No one knew she was here. She could easily vanish into the city, spirited away by the sort of monster that her parents and teachers had always warned her about, and no one would ever find her.  
  
She consulted a small piece of paper and followed a crowd heading into the subway, where she boarded a crowded train, and then a second one. A man in the train leered at her and asked her where she was from, and when she pretended not to hear him he called her an ugly word and stalked off. Her hand gripped the subway strap tightly, and Sarah remembered how hard she had been trying not to cry.  
  
She watched it from a distance but felt everything as it happened, the shape of the heels and their click on the pavement, the smell of car exhaust and exotic foods, the shade from the tall buildings that blotted out the sky. The expression on her face moved rapidly between fear and exhilaration. She could almost hear the voice in her head. This is dangerous. _This is amazing, I feel so free. This is going to get me in so much trouble._  
  
She remembered how she’d been riding a crest of post-labyrinth-defeating confidence, feeling that she could truly do anything.  
  
Her younger self finally reached her destination, a five-story walk-up with a Chinese restaurant on the first floor. She looked at the address on the piece of paper, then at the building, then at the address again.  
  
She walked up the staircase to the third floor. The building was dark and the paint was peeling. When she came to the door at the end of the hall she hesitated, and Sarah remembered that hesitation so well…  
  
She knocked.  
  
There was no answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.  
  
Sarah turned her face away from the crystal and shut her eyes, but it was no use, she couldn’t look away for long. She heard the sound of chain latches and then the door opened.  
  
As a teenager, Sarah had had so many memories of her mother. In her mind’s eye her mother had radiated warmth and beauty, with her perfectly white teeth and her raven-black hair, her arms that always seemed to hug freely and unselfishly, her ready laugh, her playful spirit. It was a memory that matched the pictures on her vanity mirror, the professional headshots and clippings from plays, alone or with Jeremy. It didn’t matter that her mother had been absent from her day-to-day life since she was thirteen—her presence loomed large enough that Sarah had never felt too far away from her. She sent letters. She called. She saw her when she could, sometimes alone and sometimes with Jeremy, and those times were magical, even if they were brief.  
  
The woman who opened the door bore no resemblance to those memories.  
  
Sarah stared into the crystal. Her mother didn’t look like a monster, she just looked…frail. Ordinary. And the expression on her face…  
  
_What were you expecting?_ Sarah’s inner voice was furious. _You show up out of the blue, with no warning—_  
  
“She’s my mother,” Sarah whispered. “I should have been able to show up out of the blue. At least once.”  
  
Her mother stood in the doorway, the door still not all the way open, staring at Sarah with a mixture of confusion and annoyance. “Sarah? What happened? What are you doing here?”  
  
It was the middle of the day, but she was wearing clothes that looked like pajamas. Her hair hung limp around her shoulders and looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a while. Gazing beyond her into the apartment, Sarah could see that it was small and dark, and there was a strong mix of musty smells that included tobacco and mold.  
  
Sarah watched herself in the crystal and remembered the way that so many of her dreams and memories had seemed to shift in that moment, how all the dream-like days spent with her mother and Jeremy took on a different cast. Her younger self took only a few seconds to regain her composure. “Nothing happened, Mom. I just wanted to see you, and I’ve never been to your apartment. Can I come in?”  
  
Her mother put on a tight smile and pushed her hair back from her face. “Sweetie, it’s really not a good time.”  
  
“I won’t stay long, I just missed you, and—“  
  
“Who’s at the door?”  
  
The voice was male and unfamiliar. Her mother closed her eyes and called back in a fake-sweet voice. “No one, just—“  
  
“Is that Sarah?” The man who emerged from the dark apartment was definitely not Jeremy—his face was more lined and slightly haggard, with unkempt blond hair and a three-day beard. Like her mother, he seemed to have just rolled out of bed, wearing only an undershirt and a pair of boxers. He reeked of alcohol.  
  
He smiled and held out his hand. “Hi, Sarah. Heard so much about you. I’m Mike, I guess your mother’s mentioned me?”  
  
Sarah didn’t take the man’s hand, looking to her mother for answers. She heard her mother mumble something that sounded like “it never came up.”  
  
Mike looked slightly abashed. “Well…good to meet you now, anyway. Why don’t you come in for a cup of coffee?”  
  
“Actually, Sarah was just leaving.” Her mother’s voice was businesslike. “Maybe next time.”  
  
“Leaving? But she just got—“  
  
“Mike, could you leave us alone for a minute?”  
  
Mike obeyed like a guilty puppy, but not before whispering something in her mother’s ear that he apparently thought Sarah couldn’t hear.  
  
“Did she bring the money?”  
  
“Not now.”  
  
“But it’s been six months since the last—“  
  
She actually shoved him. “Go back to bed.”  
  
Mike looked momentarily hurt, though he shot Sarah’s younger self a bleary grin before retreating into the cave of the apartment. Sarah’s mother smiled winningly, and as always, Sarah was amazed at how dazzling her mother could be—even in sloppy pajamas with unwashed hair, she could still make you feel, momentarily, like you were in the presence of a movie star.  
  
She reached out to ruffle the younger Sarah’s hair. “I’m really sorry, darling. I just wasn’t expecting you, and—“  
  
“Was Dad sending you money?”  
  
The dazzling smile faltered. “Oh, it was just…you know, when we saw each other I wanted you to have a good time, and I couldn’t always do that on my own, so he just…it was just a little extra.” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “But then he had to get particular about how I was spending it, so he hasn’t sent any for quite a while, and—“  
  
“He sent you money so that you’d spend time with me?”  
  
“Oh _no_ , darling, nothing like that, I’d spend time with you regardless—“  
  
“But you haven’t. Not for six months.”  
  
“I know, but I’ve just been a little overwhelmed with everything, and I was waiting for just a little more money to arrive…I meant to get in touch with you, I really did…”  
  
Sarah watched the crystal intently, remembering that series of feelings that had washed over her as she watched her mother ramble in a way that she never had before. Wanting desperately to believe what her mother was saying. The cold, sick feeling in her stomach when she knew that she couldn’t.  
  
Her mother finally smiled and made a half-hearted effort to smooth her clothes. “Anyway, I’m really sorry you came all this way, sweetie. We’ll get together again soon, all right? Maybe just…ask your father to send a little more money? He’ll listen to you, I know he will.”  
  
Sarah winced at the cloying, carefully disguised desperation in that voice. _I would have done anything for her…and she knew it._  
  
An awkward silence stretched between them until Sarah finally spoke. “I should go.”  
  
The relief on her mother’s face hurt even more than what had come before. “I’m really sorry, sweetie. Do you want me to walk you back to the station? I can get dressed—“  
  
“No.” That cold, hollow quality in her own voice. Sarah gripped the crystal tighter. “I’ll be okay on my own.”  
  
_I’ll be okay on my own. I’ll be okay on my own._  
  
She barely noticed the crystal darken.  
  
She remembered the angry confrontation with her father and Karen, who ultimately relented and said that yes, they’d sent her mother money so that she’d “be more involved,” but they’d stopped when it was clear she wasn’t spending the money on Sarah, and Sarah had called them both liars and refused to speak to them for weeks, and demanded that they never send her mother money again, and then she’d called Rachel and gotten rid of all her old toys and all remnants of what she thought of as a past life where her mother and the world she represented were the only things that mattered.  
  
She hadn’t seen her mother in person since then.  
  
She leaned against the wall, the crystal still gripped in her hand, feeling all the rage that she’d had so much trouble controlling in recent years bubbling to the surface. Rage at her mother for being an illusion, rage at her father and Karen ( _misdirected, you know that_ ) for maintaining that illusion, but mostly rage at herself for buying into it. The hand holding the crystal shook, and something inside it seemed to glow hotter.  
  
She was dimly aware of Jareth moving closer to her. “Sarah…”  
  
Her eyes suddenly came to rest on a photo on the wall by the staircase, taken when she was thirteen. She and her mother were standing side by side and posing dramatically for the camera, both their faces lit up in brilliant smiles. They looked alike. Sarah remembered how the photographer had flirted with her mother, saying she looked young enough to be Sarah’s sister.  
  
The crystal glowed warmer in her hand and seemed to give off a faint vibration. She heard Jareth’s voice, distant but low with warning. “Sarah, don’t—“  
  
She hurled the crystal as hard as she could at the photo.  
  
Sarah expected the crystal to shatter, or even for a hole to appear in the wall, given how hard she’d thrown it. But instead it moved as if through water, and when it hit the photo it dissolved slowly into a pool of black liquid, spidery veins moving slowly out from the center, consuming the photo and spreading up and down the wall.  
  
Jareth snarled and grabbed her shoulders. “For the love of Goblindom, Sarah, could you perhaps _listen_ to me for once?”  
  
She shook her head as if waking from a dream. The black substance was inching across the ceiling and the floor. “What…what did I…”  
  
“Never mind, you’ve got to get out of here—“ He made to throw her through the mirror but cursed when he saw tendrils of blackness snaking around the edges. “Too late.”  
  
The tendrils were hissing, and she thought she could hear overlapping whispers within them. The room smelled alternately sweet and putrid. “What _is_ this?”  
  
Jareth raised one hand toward the blackness and shut his eyes, then leaped back, cradling his palm. He scanned the room rapidly—she realized she had never seen him look alarmed before, and it was terrifying. “You _do_ love your damn symbols, Sarah. It’s your rage.”  
  
Sarah stared in horror at the blackness that had now almost completely covered the ceiling. She looked down and saw that tiny veins were snaking up her legs. They were cold, so cold that they burned. “This is…mine? All of it?”  
  
“Yes, congratulations, you never do anything in half-measures, do you?” There was a brittle quality to his voice’s usual sarcasm. His eyes suddenly focused on the pictures on the wall, some of which had miraculously escaped being consumed by the blackness. “That picture. Of you and Toby. Grab it.”  
  
She strained toward the wall, but the blackness was like quicksand. “I can’t, I’m not strong enough—“  
  
“Curse you to every hell imaginable, _Sarah, you defeated my fucking labyrinth when you were fifteen years old. Reach…the damn…photo.”_  
  
Sarah drew on every ounce of mental and physical strength within herself and stretched her body toward the wall, fingers grasping at the photo, finally yanking it away. Bits of blackness clung to it and snaked around her fingers. _So cold._  
  
“Good.” Jareth’s breathing sounded shallow, the blackness had reached his waist, moving up both of their bodies like a slow-motion cascade of paint in reverse. “Now look at it.”  
  
Sarah was beginning to feel dizzy, but she did as she was told, though the picture shook in her half-frozen hands. “Just look at it?”  
  
“Yes, look at it and feel what it makes you feel. And I mean really, _really_ feel it, Sarah, if you have any desire to be cast in dreadful plays ever again.”  
  
She stared intently at the picture of herself kneeling on the ground in front of Toby, her face lit up in a brilliant smile, Toby’s mouth wide open and his hands raised as if he were cheering. It had been taken not long after she’d returned from the labyrinth. She remembered vividly the love and protectiveness she’d felt for Toby in that moment, and she felt a warmth spreading from her chest into her face and down through her arms and legs, and the all-consuming blackness that had been tightening around her slowly softened its grip.  
  
She lost track of time, and the picture began to blur in front of her. The blackness seemed to recede with agonizing slowness. Finally the tendrils had shrunk into a sort of ghastly-looking flower centered over the photo of Sarah and her mother, and as she watched they finally coalesced into an orb. A black crystal hung in the air for a moment, then dropped to the ground, clear and empty.  
  
Jareth leaned against the railing of the staircase, catching his breath. The air around them both seemed to hum slightly.  
  
Sarah’s breathing was ragged, and her body felt as if it had been dipped in a vat of ice. She shook everywhere.    
  
Jareth glanced at the mirror. “I think we should get you home, precious.”  
  
She nodded numbly. The shaking in her body intensified and the room started to spin.  
  
“I need to…get warm…”  
  
She felt herself falling and heard Jareth say something colorful about the fragility of mortal bodies before the world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Thanks as always for the reads, comments, and kudos! Have noticed a few continuity / punctuation errors so will be updating previous chapters just to fix those.


	7. Chapter 7

Sarah dreamed of falling.  
  
She floated in space but also felt a weight pulling her downward. Around her blackness stretched endlessly, broken only by the occasional object that drifted up from below and then above her, out of sight. Long strings of pearls. Books, their pages fluttering like strange birds. Little points of light like fireflies. Her music box.  
  
 _…it’s further than you think…_  
  
She was falling down the shaft full of hands, and then they were pushing her upward, and then pulling her down again.  
  
Her mother was staring at her through a pane of glass, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Sarah reached out to touch the glass, but her mother was gone—  
  
—and she was falling again. She looked down but could see no end in sight, and nothing up above. Her limbs felt strangely insubstantial, almost as if she were blending into the blackness around her.  
  
 _…I don’t need you…_  
  
Ludo was in her bedroom vanity mirror, his fur looking grey and ragged, giving her a weak wave. “G’bye, Sawah.”   
  
_…she chose down…_  
  
“Sarah, I’m cold.”   
  
She was with Toby in the park, and it was snowing, and she held out her arms to him, bundling him inside her coat and pressing her cheek against his. She didn’t want to let him go, felt somehow that it was very important that she hold on to him, but…  
  
 _…so cold…_  
  
Gravity tugged like a magnet and she was falling faster, faster, she mustn’t let go of Toby, and all at once she slammed into the earthbound weight of her own body, curled into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around empty space, Toby was gone—  
  
“Toby! TOBY!!!”   
  
She desperately reached out for him, but something pinned her flailing arms to her sides. “Sarah, wake up.”  
  
“Toby…”  
  
“You’re on the other side of the mirror, Sarah. Toby isn’t here.”  
  
She blinked her eyes and the entryway of her home gradually came into focus around her. Her body was stiff and cold, but not as cold as it had been before. Before…oh God, the blackness. She was on the bench near the stairs, and she was wrapped in some kind of black fabric that smelled faintly of leather, and she was leaning against—  
  
“Before you play the indignant maiden, Sarah, I will remind you that you were quite literally freezing to death, and you did utter the words ‘I need to get warm.’”  
  
She was nestled in the curve of Jareth’s chest, his arms and very long cape wrapped around her. She started to wriggle away but he held her back.  
  
“You’re still cold, and if you’d prefer to die just to spite me then by all means proceed. I believe your will to live is stronger than that, though.”  
  
She sighed. “Fine. Because I’m still cold.”   
  
“Yes, surely this must be torture for you.”   
  
She crossed her arms under his cloak. “Must be miserable for you as well.”  
  
He snorted. “Of course not. I’ve often dreamed of cuddling up to a girl whose anger almost swallowed me.”   
  
She opened her mouth to retort but then suddenly felt exhausted. And realized that he had probably saved her life. And that he smelled and felt very, very good.  
  
She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”   
  
There was a long silence, and then he laughed, and she felt his chest rippling against her back. “I should spirit you to the goblin healers, Sarah, as you’re clearly more ill than I thought if you’re expressing _gratitude_.”  
  
Sarah rolled her eyes. She felt her body slowly growing warmer, which was a relief, because this level of physical closeness was…disconcerting.   
  
“I guess I had more rage in me than I thought.”  
  
“It would appear that your talent for destruction is exceeded only by your talent for understatement.”   
  
She laughed. “How did you—how did you know what to do?”  
  
“I didn’t, not for certain. But your rage was centered on an image, which inspired an emotion, and given that so much of magic is about the play between opposites and balances, I surmised that an opposing image and an opposing emotion might solve the problem.”   
  
Sarah thought for a moment. “Are you saying…that you saved me by making me _think happy thoughts?_ ”  
  
“Given that the idea clearly displeases you, I’ll say yes.”  
  
She shook her head. “Dear God, I’ve turned into a Disney character. My teenage self would be so, so disappointed.”   
  
“I would hope this is a small price to pay for being alive.”  
  
Sarah laughed. “Now who’s the king of understatement?” She flexed her fingers and toes, which now felt slightly less frosty. “Yes, I am happy to be alive. Even if I had to go all Peter Pan in order to save myself.”  
  
Silence stretched between them for a moment. Finally feeling somewhat warm again, Sarah gently removed Jareth’s cloak from her shoulders and stood up ( _not without regret, and you know it_ ). She wandered over to the wall of photos and looked at the one of herself and her mother, miraculously undamaged. Their faces glowed. They did look alike, maybe even more so now.   
  
“I can’t hate her,” she said softly. “Isn’t that weird?”  
  
“Most mortal tendencies are peculiar to me, Sarah, but no, I do not find this odd.”   
  
“Why not?”  
  
He looked at her for a long moment and then plucked another crystal out of the air. “She brought you joy as well as pain.”  
  
Sarah looked into the crystal to see a series of moving images of her mother—laughing at supper with Sarah’s father when Sarah was a baby, letting Sarah do her make-up, reading to her, both of them curled up in bed watching television.   
  
Sarah felt tears welling behind her eyes. “It’s not fair.”  
  
Jareth sighed and made the crystal vanish with a flick of his hand. “Please tell me you’re not still expecting fairness from life.”   
  
“I’m not.” Sarah groaned. “I just…I wish she were 100% horrible.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she brushed it away. “I wish I could hate her.”  
  
Jareth considered this. “An odd thing to wish.”  
  
“I know.” She ran a finger over the photo. “I just feel like it would make everything simpler.”   
  
“I could make you hate her.”  
  
Sarah blinked. “What?”  
  
He stood up and reached out to touch her forehead with a gloved hand. She felt a prickling sensation and a brief flash of images that felt quite real, hints of her mother doing truly terrible, unforgivable things. Things that would make it easy to banish her for good.  
  
She backed away, shaking her head. “No.”   
  
He regarded her curiously. “Why not?”  
  
“It’s…” She turned away. “It feels like cheating.”  
  
Jareth laughed. “The world may not be fair, precious, but that won’t stop you from trying to follow its rules.”  
  
Sarah smiled in spite of herself, turning back to let her gaze linger on his face. Most of the gauntness was gone—maybe her need for warmth had replenished him. His clothes fit a bit more snugly ( _never not going to notice that, are you?_ ), though there was still a slight darkness under his eyes and a hint of silver in his hair.   
  
Without thinking, she reached out and touched his cheek. He started to pull away but stopped, perhaps seeing that there was no pity in her expression. He sighed, closing his eyes and reaching up to thread his fingers through hers.   
  
“Is there…” Sarah frowned. What exactly was she supposed to ask? “Can I need anything for you?”  
  
He laughed, not unkindly, and kissed her hand. When he spoke there was genuine wonder in his voice. “What a remarkable question.”   
  
“I just…shit, you basically saved my life—“  
  
“I saved myself, and you happened to get saved in the process.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, but I’d still like to…I just don’t want you to suffer, like before.”   
  
A flicker of pain passed over his face, and his eyes seemed to soften. “I have suffered intermittently for longer than your mind can imagine, Sarah. It’s a part of my nature.” He paused and let go of her hand. “I do…thank you for wishing to ease it.”   
  
“Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, keep people locked up in a dungeon in your castle and siphon off need when—“ Her mouth fell open. “Dear God. Please forget that I just suggested that.”  
  
Jareth’s eyes went wide. “You continue to surprise me, which is saying a great deal.” He sighed. “I won’t say that I never considered the prospect. Sadly—or not, from your perspective—it would be ineffective. Whatever elemental forces created me saw to it that I could not, as you might say, ‘cheat.’”   
  
She sighed. “So no faking needs, then. Well, I could use a cup of hot chocolate and a good night's sleep right now, but I don't know if that's going to give you much juice."  
  
He smirked and then slowly, deliberately reached out to run a finger down her cheek. Her skin tingled under his touch, and she felt her face flush.  
  
“I think there might be other things that you need, Sarah.”  
  
She lowered her eyes but didn’t move away. _My God, if just his_ hand _feels that good, and with_ gloves _on…_  
  
 _Nope, nope, back to reality, Miss Frisky._   
  
She cleared her throat. “Forgive me for, ahem, hoping that when it comes to my…desires you’d be interested in more than a quick need-fix.”   
  
He smiled. “Gods, Sarah, the number of interests I have when it comes to your desires could fill a book.”  
  
She shivered. _Please tell me again why we’re not doing this?_   
  
“Well,” she began, and gently moving his hand away from her cheek was pure agony, “while I’m not going to pretend I don’t want…that (very badly), I will remind you that I just nearly drowned in my own rage and had to re-live an extremely painful memory, which, despite what my body might want, is a bit of a mood-killer.” She looked around at the familiar entryway of her home. "And ugh, not in this limbo between childhood and adulthood, surrounded by angsty childhood memories. That's just creepy."  
  
He sighed, but he was still smirking. “Cruel girl.”  
  
She couldn’t resist giving him a particularly seductive grin. “I didn’t say never, Jareth.”  
  
His eyes widened very slightly, and then the cad-mask was back in place. “Well then. Your beggar king wouldn’t say no to a kiss, if you’re still feeling generous with need.”  
  
She laughed. "You've already had two of those."  
  
"Yes, but the last one made you cry."  
  
He had a point. ”Fine. I need you to kiss me. And then throw me back through the mirror, please."  
  
He reached out to twine his fingers through her hair, cupping her chin with his other hand. That tingling sensation traveled all the way to her fingers and toes, and she forced herself to look away from the very attractive hint of chest that his slightly-open shirt revealed.  
  
"One kiss, and then through the mirror. Sure that's all you want, precious?"  
  
 _Not by a long sh--_ "Yes."   
  
He made a deep bow. “I am at your service, my lady.”  
  
He moved forward and kissed her very gently on the mouth, his lips barely moving, and as he closed the tiny distance between them she could feel the softness of his hair brushing over her cheeks and the warmth of his body, feel the hard angles of his chest and shoulders gently pressing into the softness of her breasts, his legs shifting against hers. And then he pulled back and smiled, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.  
  
He laughed at the look on her face. “I’m sorry, precious, was that not to your—“  
  
She pulled him to her and kissed him hard, her hands gripping his hair, and he seemed to freeze for an instant before he responded, kissing her back with equal fervor, drinking in the need that even she could feel flowing out of her in waves.  And then his tongue slipped between her lips, and  she drank in the taste of him just as eagerly as he was consuming her. She pushed her body tightly into his, feeling heat and hardness and a need that matched her own.  
  
And then images burst through her mind, images of the two of them that made her blush much more deeply, wonderfully clear images of exactly what her body wanted to do with his and the remarkable things he seemed capable of doing with those truly magical fingers, tongue, and—  
  
And then he pulled away, breathing heavily but looking at her with a decidedly satisfied look on his face. “My duties are completed here, then.”   
  
He gave her one last, chaste kiss on the cheek, gripped her shoulders, and tossed her through the mirror.

* * *

  
  
When she woke up her mouth was still saturated with the taste of him. Her body felt warm and tingly, even before she was able to move properly.  
  
She sighed and started to wiggled her fingers and toes. _That_ , she thought as her body slowly came back to life, _was a very, very dirty trick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this one's a bit short, but it seemed like a good place to stop. Two (or MAYBE three) more chapters to go, they're in the works.


	8. Chapter 8

  
Sarah knelt on a linoleum floor, her face streaked with sweat and tears, strands of hair plastered to her face. Her head was lowered, but her eyes stared upward, fiery and alive.  
  
She stayed in that position for quite a while, letting her quick breathing come down to a more normal pace. She’d been shouting before, but now when she spoke her voice was deadly calm.  
  
“Leave, then.” She gave a pained smile. “It’s what you’re best at.”   
  
She stared straight ahead for several more beats before she broke character and wiped her hair out of her face. Someone handed her a tissue.   
  
The room was silent, the four people sitting at the table in front of her watching her every movement. The man on the far right—Sarah remembered that he was the AD—was hurriedly taking notes.  
  
She felt like she was coming out of a trance when Lori Meeker finally spoke. “Do you need a minute, Sarah?”   
  
Sarah shook her head, trying to make herself presentable as quickly as possible. “No, I’m fine. Just an intense scene, you know.”  
  
“Yes.” Lori was smiling. “That was…quite something.”   
  
Sarah smiled back. Lori looked just like she did in the photos that accompanied write-ups about her in different magazines and newspapers: dark skin, dreadlocks all the way down her back, faded leather jacket, ripped jeans. The photos had always made Sarah think of a badass action hero, someone you definitely didn’t want to mess with, but to her relief, Lori had been a lot gentler and more motherly than the photos would suggest.  
  
“I wonder,” Lori said now, glancing at the woman on her left, who Sarah remembered was the casting director, “and don’t answer this if you don’t know yet, but…why do you think she’s so determined to stay in the church? Why wouldn’t she even consider following her husband, when she seems so devoted to him?”  
  
Sarah thought for a moment. “I suppose it’s the devil you know,” she said. “It’s brought her a lot of pain, but also a lot of joy. He may be a powerful force in her life, but he’s nothing compared to the church. He’s mortal, the church is eternal.”   
  
Lori nodded. “Do you think there’s anything that could make her leave?”   
  
“Maybe…” Sarah laughed. “Maybe if her husband became a god. Which is a weird thing to say, because he kind of was a god to her, within the world of that church. But when he decides to leave it sort of gives him clay feet in her eyes.”   
  
Lori nodded, considering Sarah’s words. After a moment she stood up and leaned forward to shake Sarah’s hand. “We’ll be in touch very soon.”   
  
“Thank you.” The adrenaline rush of doing the scene was wearing off a bit, and Sarah felt a little shaky on her feet. “It was an honor.”   
  
Lori laughed. “I can’t say I enjoyed your play, but I’m certainly glad that I went to see it. Then again, pretty much every success I’ve ever had started with an idea that everyone else thought was crazy.”  
  
“I’ll remember that.”   
  
Lori and the rest of the crew started to gather their things. “Do you write, Sarah?”  
  
She blushed slightly. “Other than the occasional journal? Not really.”  
  
“You should. You see interesting things.”  
  
Sarah mumbled some mix of thanks and self-deprecation and showed herself out the door, trying to imagine how she would describe this day to Miguel without squealing gleefully the whole time.   
  


* * *

  
  
“It’s good to see you again, Sarah.”   
  
“Yeah, it’s, uh, good to be back.”   
  
Rebecca sat back in her chair, her expression neutral. She was wearing a silk shirt with a Mandarin collar and jeans, plus brown leather boots with low heels. Sarah looked at her own clothes—another old t-shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and sandals—and as usual found them wanting.  
  
 _Since when do you care about clothes?_  
  
 _Maybe since I’ve been spending time with someone who cares a_ little _too much about how he looks._   
  
Rebecca smiled at her.  “Sarah, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry—“  
  
“No, really, I’m the one who should apologize—“  
  
“I shouldn’t have brought up something so sensitive so soon—“  
  
“No…” Sarah took a deep breath. “It was good, actually, because—well, I need to tell you something.”  
  
Rebecca nodded. “Please.”   
  
“So…my mother.” She put her hands in her pockets and took them out again. “There’s a lot there. And I can talk about it. But…I haven’t seen her in person in ten years, and for now I’d like to keep it that way. She’s not good for me. Maybe it’s not all her fault, but she just…she brings bad things in. And a lot of people keep telling me that I should try to have a relationship with her, and I don’t want to, so please don’t make me.”  
  
She realized that she had started speaking very fast and breathed in deeply when she finished talking. Rebecca waited a moment before speaking.  
  
“All right.”   
  
Sarah blinked. “All right? Really?”  
  
“Yes.” Rebecca picked up the small notebook that she occasionally wrote in during their sessions. “You might be surprised to know that when people have unpleasant relationships with family members, I don’t always recommend that they reconcile. Sometimes it’s better just to walk away.”   
  
Sarah felt a weight lift at the sound of Rebecca’s words. “I don’t know if I want to walk away, I just don’t think I want to walk TOWARD. Not now, at least.”   
  
“And that’s fine. Maybe someday that will change, maybe it won’t. But for now, walk in whichever direction you like.”  
  
Sarah nodded. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind.”   
  
Rebecca made a brief note in her notebook and smiled. “Why don’t you tell me something good that’s happened to you recently?”  
  
“Huh.” Sarah was surprised to discover that this question didn’t trigger an eye-roll. _Thinking happy thoughts, talking about good things happening to you, next you’ll be wearing pink and whistling while you do housework._ “Well, I had a good audition, my roommate hasn’t kicked me out yet, I’m able to pay my rent, and…I’ve been spending some time with an old friend.”   
  
Rebecca’s eyes lit up. Sarah realized that Miguel was the only friend she’d ever mentioned in their sessions. Rebecca probably thought she was a recluse. Which was kind of true. “An old friend? That’s lovely.”  
  
“Yeah. Well, not a friend, exactly.”  
  
“Oh really?” Rebecca smiled. “More than a friend?”  
  
“No. Well, not really, but…” She sighed. “It’s really, really, _really_ complicated.”   
  
Rebecca nodded, still smiling. “Isn’t it always.”   
  


* * *

  
  
“Hello?”  
  
The lower half of Karen’s face was out of the screen, like always—her stepmother had never really gotten the hang of computer-based communication, and Sarah had long since given up trying to teach her. Karen’s voice sounded anxious.  
  
“Sarah? Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She tried to make her expression nonchalant. “Hi.”  
  
Karen’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Well, hello. It’s…it’s good to hear from you.”   
  
She sounded like she really meant it. It was true that Sarah rarely called her father and stepmother these days—they were usually the ones calling her. She made a point of keeping in touch with Toby, but since conversations with her parents had started to involve shouting or sniping she’d just started avoiding them altogether. It made sense that Karen would think she was calling because something was wrong, or because she needed money.   
  
Sarah cleared her throat. “So…” _What was normal conversation with your family like, again?_ “How are you and Dad doing?”   
  
Karen seemed as surprised by the question as Sarah had been to hear herself asking it. “How are we doing? Well…we’re well, I suppose. Toby’s out of school for the summer, you know, and your father’s been teaching him how to play chess, but Toby’d rather be outside, which seems perfectly normal to me, not everyone has to be a homebody—“ Her brow furrowed again. “Nothing against it, of course, you and your father both love your books and that’s fine—“  
  
“No, no, it’s okay. I’m glad Toby likes to be outdoors.” She laughed. “Two pale bookworms who suck at sports are probably enough for any family.”  
  
Karen’s eyes smiled. “Well, I’ve managed to get your father out for a hike twice this year, and he actually admitted that he enjoyed it after the fact.” Karen ran a hand through her neatly coiffed hair. “How was your play?”  
  
Sarah grimaced. “It was terrible.”  
  
“We really would have been happy to come.”   
  
“I know. I just—I didn’t want you to come just to be nice and then have to suffer through a really bad play.”  
  
Karen laughed. “It can’t have been that bad, Sarah.”  
   
She recalled Jareth’s words about firey theater and goblin poetry. “Yeah, it was that bad. But something good came out of it, at least.”   
  
“Oh really?” Karen’s eyes seemed to smile. “Do tell.”   
  
Sarah told her about Lori Meeker and the audition. “And I literally just got off the phone with my agent, like, ten minutes ago, and I got the part.”   
  
“Sarah, that’s wonderful!” Karen was actually clapping her hands. Sarah felt her face grow hot. “You…you deserve it. You really do. Wow…am I the first person you called?”  
  
“Well, I texted Miguel first, but yes, you were the first person I _called_.”   
  
Karen sat back slightly. “Thank you, Sarah. We can’t wait to see it.”   
  
“Yeah.” Sarah glanced at her watch, amazed to discover how long their conversation had continued without any arguing. She took a deep breath and spoke quickly, before she could stop herself. “Karen, I’m sorry.”  
  
Karen leaned forward. “Sorry? About what?”  
  
“About…a lot of things.” She stared at her hands while she spoke. “I was a teenager, and I was mad because you weren’t the perfect version of things that I wanted and I was selfish and stupid and I’m really, really sorry.”   
  
The silence that followed seemed to stretch out forever. Karen’s eyes had slipped out of the screen, and when they reappeared Sarah was shocked to see that her stepmother was crying.  
  
“Oh, Karen, I’m sorry—“  
  
“No, no, it’s all right.” Karen wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry we couldn’t protect you, Sarah.”  
  
“Protect me?”  
  
“From…everything that happened with your mother.”   
  
Sarah felt herself starting to cry and bit her lip. “No, no, that’s the thing, you DID, and I was just too stubborn to see it for what it was. You both did what she didn’t or couldn’t, and I just got mad at you for it.”  
  
“You were a teenager. You were confused.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m grown up now, sort of. And I should have apologized a lot sooner. I’m, you know, trying to be better.”  
  
Karen wiped her eyes again. There was another silence, broken only by the sound of Karen blowing her nose.  
  
“Thank you for being so good to Toby, Sarah,” she finally said. “I don’t know what changed when you were fifteen, but…he was lucky to have you. He still is.”  
  
Sarah laughed. _Maybe someday I’ll tell you how I was responsible for a bunch of goblins tossing him around like a beach ball, but not today. I’m enjoying your good will._ “Well, remind him that he’s a little monster next time you talk to him.”  
  
Karen laughed. “He was asking about you just this morning, actually.”   
  
“He was?”  
  
“Yes, he wants to know when you’re coming home.”   
  
“How about next weekend?”  
  
Karen looked surprised. “Really? What about work, or rehearsals?”  
  
“Rehearsals won’t start till next week, and I can switch shifts pretty easily.”  
  
Karen smiled, her whole face momentarily visible in the computer screen. “That would be wonderful, Sarah. We’d all love to see you.”   
  
“Yeah.” And for the first time in a long while the next words that came out of her mouth were completely true. “I’d love to see you too. All of you.”   
  


* * *

  
  
Miguel’s kitchen smelled faintly of spices and garlic, the latter of which Sarah was awkwardly chopping on one of several beautiful dark wood cutting boards that Miguel had laid out on the counter top. She had, as usual, insisted that she was terrible at chopping things, and he had, as usual, insisted that anyone could learn.   
  
“You’re going to slice your fingers off,” he said with a sigh.  
  
“I told you I’m not good at this.”  
  
“Little Miss Lori Meeker Loves Me, you are never, ever allowed to use that excuse again.” He gently curled the tips of her fingers under her left hand and helped her reposition the knife in her right hand. “Try again, and use the part of the blade that’s closest to your hand, not the tip.”   
  
She did as instructed and managed to chop the garlic without cutting herself. “All right. But I still can’t cook.”  
  
“If you can chop garlic and boil water you can cook. You should do it a little more often, it’d help you save money and then you wouldn’t have to go to that therapist to get extra from your father and Karen.”   
  
“I get discounted food at the cafe, probably cheaper than the mess I’d make in the kitchen.” Sarah poured the garlic into a bowl of chicken and lemon slices. “Besides, the therapy’s been good. It’s led me to some interesting places.”   
  
Miguel smiled. “Just as long as you don’t get too happy. Who’s going to go to afternoon off-off previews with me and rip them apart afterward?”  
  
“Don’t worry.” She took the basil leaves that Miguel handed her and began tearing leaves off of stems. “I think I can keep one foot in the cynical world.”   
  
They heard the apartment door open and soon after the sound of Nick’s voice from the living room. “Am I too late?”  
  
“Nope, we’re just prepping. Come in here and tell Sarah how pretty she looks.”   
  
Sarah punched Miguel’s shoulder as Nick came into the kitchen, loosening his tie with one hand as he used a handkerchief to wipe his forehead with the other. They’d always been cordial, but she couldn’t help feeling like Nick was of a different world, wearing a suit every day and making more money than she knew she ever would. He was reserved where Miguel was loud, more of a homebody where Miguel loved to be surrounded by people, but somehow they worked wonderfully, which just further drove home to Sarah that long-term relationships were a mystery she hadn’t unraveled yet.  
  
Nick kissed Miguel and was about to say something that Sarah was sure would sound careful and polite, but his face betrayed genuine surprise when he saw her.   
  
“Wow.”  
  
She blushed slightly. “Evening, Nick. That different, huh?”  
  
“No, no, you’re not, it’s just—you do look really lovely, Sarah.”   
  
She smiled. “Thanks.”   
  
Privately, she knew she looked different. After ending her call with Karen she’d looked at herself in the mirror for quite a while, recalling Rebecca’s sharp taste in clothing, her roommate Julia’s constant put-together-ness, even Jareth’s (curse him) tendency to always look like he’d stepped off of a stage. And then she realized that it had been ages since she’d put on a trace of make-up, done anything to her hair besides shove it aside, or wear anything carefully chosen.  
  
She’d put on some music and torn through her tiny closet, pulling out long-unworn tops, trousers, dresses, and skirts in bright colors. Then she’d gone into the bathroom and pulled out make-up that had gathered dust, and the plastic bag of jewelry and hair accessories stuffed in her bathroom drawer.  
  
In the end, she told herself she hadn’t done anything too dramatic, but the change was…noticeable. Her hair was combed and shiny, pulled back with a couple of simple clips. There was a hint of pinkness in her cheeks and a trace of black around her eyes. She wore a black top with embroidered red roses that hung a bit low and was gathered at the sides, spilling in a light cascade of folds over a black A-line skirt. Her shoes were heels with black rhinestones that killed her feet, but that she had to admit looked very, very good.   
  
Miguel was boiling pasta and tossing chicken and seasonings into a skillet. “She cleans up nicely, doesn’t she? I’m convinced she’s got a hot date tonight.”  
  
Sarah laughed as Nick retreated into the bedroom, saying something about wanting to change clothes. “I wish.”  
  
“Or at least another meetup with the dream man. Does he have a name, by the way?”  
  
Sarah blushed, and Miguel noticed immediately. “My my, Sarah! Did you finally do more than kiss?”  
  
She took a larger-than-usual sip of the red wine she’d poured herself earlier. “No. But I sort of…hinted that I’d like to.”   
  
“Progress! You know you’re on the road to good mental health again when your randy side emerges.” Miguel squeezed her shoulder. “Seriously, though, you should have some fun. Play a bit. Enjoy how pretty you look and let someone make you feel good, even if it’s just a fling. You deserve it.”  
  
 _He has a very, very good point._   
  
Sarah forced herself not to give the metaphorical devil on her shoulder a very literal smack.   
  
_Really, though, this is a win-win, you get to feel good, there are no real consequences given that he’s not of this world, and most likely his need-bank would be full to the brim for quite some time, given how vividly you’ve been daydreaming about—_  
  
“I’ll consider it,” she said, her voice just a little more high-pitched than normal.  
  
He handed her a stack of plates to take to the table. “Please do. Long-term stuff can wait—sometimes what you need is a palate cleanser.”  
  
“Palate cleanser?”  
  
“Yes. You know, the fling that you have after a lot of mediocre or bad relationships but before the really good one. Just to sort of remind yourself that all the parts still work.”   
  
She followed him into the living room and helped set the table. “I’m pretty sure the parts still work—I just haven’t had much interest in using them for a while.”   
  
“Well then, what better time to dust off—you know, I think I’m going to stop this extended machine metaphor right here because I’ll embarrass Nick. But you know my thoughts—have fun. Feel good. Treat yourself.”   
  
She suddenly reached out and hugged Miguel tightly, and he jumped in surprise. “Uh…are we practicing already?”  
  
She laughed against his chest. “No. Just…thank you. For everything. I know I’ve been a mess a lot of the time.”  
  
He patted her head. “Not a lot of the time.”  
  
“Yeah, a lot.” She pulled away and ran a hand through her slightly-mussed hair. “And some things I don’t say enough, and people need to hear them.”   
  
He smiled. “Well, thank you, you nutcase. And I’m overdue for a quarter-life crisis, so we can take turns being a mess, deal?”  
  
She smiled back. “Deal.”  
  
Dinner was delicious. Between mouthfuls of lemony pasta and perfectly roasted asparagus they talked about bad plays and good plays and Lori Meeker’s amazing sense of style, a conversation that Nick couldn’t always follow but somehow managed to contribute to, making Miguel laugh and tease him in a way that he seemed to love, and Sarah was only occasionally distracted by the voice of the devil on her shoulder, a voice that got steadily more insistent as the night wore on and made a more and more convincing case for why she should get herself home, hop through a mirror, and find out exactly what sort of tingly secrets were hiding under Jareth’s gloves.   
  


* * *

  
  
“This is a terrible idea.”  
  
 _This is the greatest idea you’ve had in years._   
  
“No, it isn’t.”   
  
_Please. It’s just like Miguel said, no consequences, no sheets to wash…_  
  
“Every time I pass through that mirror I am essentially gambling with my life. How do I know he won’t just decide to keep me there? Or lock me up in a dungeon somewhere?”  
  
 _A sex dungeon? Why is this a problem?_   
  
“No, a _dungeon_ dungeon. Or an oubliette.”  
  
 _Nothing in his behavior over the past few weeks has indicated that he wants to lock you up._  
  
“All right, what if I get so delirious from all the sex that I can’t think straight and by the time I come back through the mirror a hundred years have passed and I’m like a female Rip van Winkle?”  
  
 _Damn. Your neuroses are really, really creative._   
  
“And he’s not even human. How do I know sex with him won’t kill me?”  
  
 _All right, you’ve moved beyond creative to batshit insane._   
  
“It’s not insane. I’ve never slept with a…whatever he is. Anything could happen.”  
  
 _All right. Death by sex, it’s possible. Still, what a way to go, right?_   
  
“That’s not funny. Even if I don’t die, I could…get pregnant with triplets.”  
  
 _You’ve been on the pill since you were twenty, and it seems to work._  
  
Sarah groaned. “I don’t trust him, and there’s no reason I should trust him. He’s dangerous.”  
  
 _He only_ seems _dangerous. Which is hot._  
  
“Jesus, that is NOT a good reason to sleep with someone.”  
  
 _It’s a perfectly good reason to sleep with someone. Not a good reason to marry them, sure, or introduce them to the parents and share an apartment, but that’s never going to happen with him._  
  
“Why not?”  
  
She actually heard her inner voice laugh. _Do you seriously need an answer to that question?_  
  
Sarah rolled her eyes. “No. But what if he’s just doing it for a need-fix? I don’t feel like being used.”  
  
 _You absolutely, positively feel like being used. Multiple times, in creative positions._  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
The voice in her head sighed. _He’s right, you know. You really do overthink everything._  
  
“Well, I’m glad one of us does, because otherwise we’d probably be dead by now.”   
  
_You’re not going to die. You’re going to get something that you want—need—very badly, and if you don’t go after it you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life._   
  
Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “There are other ways I can fulfill that particular need.”  
  
 _Like what?_  
  
“Like…going to a bar and hooking up. Or making use of something in my bedside table drawer that needs new batteries but should still work.”  
  
 _Pitiful substitutes, and you know it._  
  
Sarah groaned again and stared at her ( _much more alluring than usual_ ) reflection in the mirror. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”  
  
 _No. Because I’ve got our best interests at heart._   
  
“And you’re horny.”  
  
 _That too._   
  
Sarah stood up and started to pace the room. “How do I even…what do I even say?”  
  
 _How about “Evening, Jareth, I need something from you and you know exactly what it is”?_   
  
She sighed. “That’s not very suave.”  
  
 _He’s the suave one. Not much point in trying to beat him at that game._   
  
She opened her closet door. “All right, I won’t bother. More importantly, what do I wear?”  
  
 _Very back, still in the plastic bag. You’ll both thank me._  
  
Sarah reached into the back of her closet to find an ankle-length nightgown that she’d bought on a whim back in college, planning to wear it for her then-boyfriend…who’d dumped her before she’d had the chance to show it off.  
  
She held the gown up in front of her in the mirror. “Are you sure this isn’t…too much?”  
  
 _Too much? Have you seen what Jareth wears on a regular non-sex day?_  
  
She snorted. “True.”  
  
She pulled the plastic bag off of the hanger. The nightgown was beautiful, with a low neckline and a slit up the side, colored with a pattern of curlicues and leafy vines in silver and black. It felt deliciously smooth under her fingers.  
  
Before she could go back into over-thinking mode she quickly took off her top, skirt, and underclothes, digging in the back of her bureau drawer for the one pair of slightly lacy, less substantial underwear that she owned. She slipped the nightgown over her head and almost didn’t recognize herself when she looked in the mirror.  
  
“This is…wow. This is different.”   
  
_That’s one way of putting it._  
  
She took out her hair clips, letting her hair fall in a shiny cascade around her face. She reached into the small handbag on her desk and pulled out a tube of lipstick in a deep burgundy shade, applying just enough to be noticeable.   
  
She looked at her smiling, slightly flushed reflection, the black and silver fabric that shimmered slightly and hugged her curves, and she felt her whole body tingle with anticipation.   
  
“Right.” Her heart started to pound in her chest. “I’m really doing this.”  
  
The voice in her head had gone momentarily quiet. She glanced at the book on her desk, picked it up, and turned to the middle.  
  
“I really hope there’s something vaguely sensual in here, because self-help affirmations are not my idea of verbal foreplay.” She paused on a chapter near the end of the book. “All right, here we go.”   
  
Her hands and voice shook as she read. “I am open and receptive to all good.”   
  
The mirror reflected only her own face. She took a deep breath. “I am open and receptive to all good.”   
  
No response. Sarah felt panic rising through her chest. “Shit, have I lost my mind? Was any of this real? Why the hell am I talking to my mirror expecting anything to happen?”  
  
 _Calm down. Try it one more time._   
  
Sarah breathed in and out slowly and repeated the words one more time. “I am open and receptive to all good.”  
  
The mirror shimmered, and she felt a mixture of both relief and abject terror. And a bit of annoyance. _The bastard probably wanted to play with my head._  
  
The mirror blurred and then slowly cleared to reveal a room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a castle. The ceiling was low, and there were were thick wooden beams embedded in it, and stone walls with a large window that looked out onto stars and a crescent moon. There were candles in sconces on the walls and on various surfaces, including a small table with wine and glasses and what looked like cheese, and there was a large four-poster bed with thick-looking blankets and pillows, which Jareth was comfortably lounging on, his eyes closed.   
  
She was relieved to see that he didn’t look particularly gaunt. His clothing was slightly less extravagant than usual—a loose, cream-colored shirt, slightly open in front, the ever-present gloves, and dark-colored trousers that for once didn’t seem to be clinging too tightly. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing shoes and idly wondered if this was what he slept in. If he slept.  
  
He let out a long, slow breath and glanced toward the window. “I must confess, I’d wondered what this room would look like. I’d thought it might be a little more extravagant—velvet curtains, a fountain, chandeliers. This is…cozy.”  
  
Sarah couldn’t tell if that was meant to be an insult. Still, she instinctively opened her mouth to snap something back but couldn’t think of anything to say. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she felt sure he could hear it.  
  
He rose slowly from the bed. “The wine and cheese is a nice touch. You’ve—“  
  
He finally turned to look at her, and whatever quip he’d been planning died on his lips. She would come back to that moment again and again, because even with everything that came after, seeing the Goblin King caught so completely off guard was truly magical.   
  
The carefully set lines of his face that seemed to be in a permanent state of self-assured smirking slowly melted, leaving him looking strangely lost. He opened his mouth and closed it again, and then whispered something in a language she didn’t understand. His eyes never left her.  
  
Her heart continued to pound. She forced herself to smile and tried to think of something clever or seductive to say, but all she could manage was “Hi.”   
  
He nodded. “Hello.”   
  
His voice sounded hoarse, which made her relax slightly. She cleared her throat. “I, uh…” She pushed her shoulders back and tried to sound more confident than she felt. “I need something from you. And I think you know what it is.”  
  
He was striding across the room and pushing his hand through the mirror before she’d finished the second part. “May I—“  
  
“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're finally there! As silly as it may sound, I've been writing the last chapters of this story a bit feverishly because a) I live comparatively close to North Korea, and things are a little freaky with NK-world relations at the moment, and b) one random thought I had in the midst of all of it was how sad I would be if the world ended and this story remained unfinished and unsexified. (Hoping I don't live to regret those words. If they're some of the last that I ever type, remember me as a girl who loved glitter, mismatched eyes, and angsty romance.) Anyway, chapter 9 coming soon, barring nuclear catastrophes, heat exhaustion, or typhoons-the latter two of which are probably a lot more likely at this point. I hope.


	9. Chapter 9

Mirror lag, of course, made things slightly less graceful than she would have liked.  
  
Thankfully Jareth had the decency not to make sarcastic comments while she lay curled on the bed and unable to respond (though he later referred to that period as _the longest five minutes of my very long life_ ). When she finally had full use of her limbs and voice she stood up and took in her surroundings. She’d come through a large mirror hanging on the wall, and she was surprised yet again at the girl who looked back at her from it, familiar but not. The rest of the room _was_ cozy, but not cute, thankfully. The candles and the moonlight illuminated everything just enough, and it all smelled slightly of wood and night air.  
  
And then her gaze turned to Jareth and lingered on his face and chest, all angles and soft shadows in the flickering light, his mismatched eyes gleaming as he stared at her. His face seemed to be working very hard to reclaim its usual snide expression.  
  
“I feel…slightly underdressed.”  
  
Sarah laughed. “I have a feeling you’ve never said that before.”  
  
He appeared to think about this for a moment. “No, I can’t say that I have. Still, if I’d known this was a formal affair…”  
  
She looked down at herself. “I, uh, don’t know if this thing is substantial enough to be called ‘formal.’”  
  
“And thank the Gods for that.”  
  
She felt some sort of barrier dissolve between them at that moment, and the next thing she knew she had crossed the short distance to his side of the room and he was kissing her with wild abandon, his hands grabbing fistfuls of her hair while his mouth moved quickly from her lips to her cheek and down over her neck and shoulders. She responded in kind, drinking in the smell and taste of him, kissing wherever her mouth could reach.  
  
He whispered against her ear. “Tell me what you need, precious.”  
  
She smiled and then let out a small yip of pleasure when he bit her shoulder. “I think it’s fairly obvious.”  
  
“Yes,” he breathed, burying his face in her hair, “but I want to hear you say it. And…” he bit her again, “be detailed.”  
  
“Detailed?” She ran her hands through his hair ( _so soft_ ). “Is that a requirement for this particular sort of need-feeding?”  
  
“No, it’s just something I want very badly.” He gave her mouth a particularly fierce kiss and then pulled away to look directly into her eyes, hands cupping the sides of her face. “Please.”  
  
The raw desire etched onto his face made her shiver, even as words were getting slightly more difficult to form. “Detailed.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She took a deep breath. “I need you…to say my name quietly at first, and then louder.”  
  
He nodded, eyes piercing hers, face flushed. “Go on.”  
  
“I need you to hold me down when I lose control of my senses.” She smiled as he sucked in his breath. “And I need you to significantly reorder time, because I will want to do everything we’re going to do again, and again, and again.”  
  
He smiled and put his lips near her ear again. “More detailed, Sarah,” he whispered.  
  
Her heart threatened to burst through her chest. _Well, I already knew I was going to hell._  
  
She whispered in his ear and heard his breathing grow steadily quicker as the words spilled out of her, words she’d certainly thought and pictured but had never spoken aloud.  
  
When she finished he raked her body with his hands, gripping the fabric of her nightgown and pulling it upward. “Demanding girl,” he whispered. “Luckily for you, I’m very,” he gripped her hair and pulled her head backward, giving her neck a series of punishing kisses, “ _very_ generous.”  
  
“One more th—aaaahhh.” She managed to reach down and grab one of his roving hands. “I want you to take off these damn gloves, please.”  
  
He chuckled. “In time. After you’ve…adjusted.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “You have a ridiculously high opinion of your skills.”  
  
He slipped his hands under the straps of her nightgown. “That sounds like a challenge.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow. “And if it is?”  
  
He grinned. “Then you should know that I _always_ play to win.”    
  
Her nightgown slipped to the floor with two light flicks of his wrists, and Sarah felt the shock of the cool night air all over her exposed skin. An old part of herself instinctively curled inward, hands reaching up to cover herself, but she banished the instinct quickly and left her arms at her sides, her gaze meeting his, watching his eyes travel over her like a caress. He said something again in that unfamiliar language.  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
He smiled and trailed one hand from her neck down over her stomach, and she gasped when she felt his fingers slip just under the lace of her underwear. “Hard to translate. The closest phrasing might be _you are the star’s fire in which I would happily burn_.”  
  
“That’s lovely…” Her hands slipped under his shirt. “You’ll have to teach me more of it.”  
  
He closed his eyes as her hands traveled over his chest and back, and he said something else in a tone that sounded slightly rougher. “That one’s simpler,” he whispered.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yes, it means _get me the fuck out of these clothes_.”  
  
His shirt and trousers were off in a hurried jumble of hands pulling and unfastening, and _oh God_ he was beautiful, all hard angles and smooth, pale surfaces in the flickering light of moon and candles, and she hungrily kissed a heated trail across his chest and tasted something delightfully male mixed with ice and autumn air and spring rain, wrapping her arms around his chest and pressing as much of herself into him as she possibly could.  
  
He was kissing down her stomach and then he was kneeling in front of her, his mouth nibbling a trail over the delightfully insubstantial barrier of her underwear, and then his tongue slipped lower and she screamed and grabbed his hair with both hands. His mouth was so _hot_ , and so precise, and she felt her knees buckling and was grateful that the bed was there to catch her as she fell backward. He pulled her underwear off easily as his mouth continued its slow exploration, his hands holding her firmly against the bed as she bucked and twisted under his tongue.  
  
And just as she was sure she might pass out with the overwhelming sensation of dizzying heat she felt him climb on top of her, easily pinning her arms above her head with one hand. His mouth snaked a trail down her neck to her breasts, and she arched her back and as his teeth grazed her nipple and one of his legs slipped between hers, moving against her slowly, and her arms struggled against him, but he was too strong…  
  
“Gods, Jareth, let me touch you, please—”  
  
He sucked her nipple into his mouth and she cried out. When he looked up his face was flushed but smirking.  
  
“Sorry, precious, I couldn’t hear you.”  
  
“Let me t—“  
  
He leaped forward to smother her mouth while his free hand squeezed her other breast, tongue playing with hers while she continued to writhe under him. When he finally came up for air he was still smiling. “Still couldn’t hear you.”  
  
She wrapped one leg around him to press him harder against her, and his smirk faltered for a moment. “Let. Me. Touch. You.”  
  
He laughed and let go of her hands. “I did say that I was generous—“  
  
She flipped him onto his back and straddled him, and the look in his eyes was a mix of surprise and raw lust that made her grin. She stayed that way for a few seconds, just looking at him looking up at her in wonder, and she reached out to cup his cheek and he closed his eyes and kissed her hand…  
  
…and then she flattened her body against his and gripped his arms while she kissed his neck and chest, the softness of her breasts rubbing against him as she moved steadily downward, and he was whispering her name as she moved but then when her lips made a trail from his knee up the inside of his thigh he was shouting it…  
  
And suddenly she was on her back again and she felt a wonderful heat as he slipped between her legs, and her fingernails gripped his shoulders as he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked backward, and his mouth was whispering next to her ear, his breath hot against her.  
  
“Tell me what you need, Sarah.”  
  
She moaned and pushed herself harder against him, feeling a delicious ache spread through her body. Her voice was pained. “Please…”  
  
He shifted against her again ( _so close!_ ) and she cried out. “Say it, precious, tell me what you need.”  
  
“…need…need you inside me…”  
  
He kissed his way down her neck and over her breasts. “Again.”  
  
Her voice was a growl. “ _I need you inside me_.”  
  
He came back up to meet her eyes, and they were wilder than she’d ever seen them, and then they rolled back in his head as he pushed himself inside her, and Sarah screamed as heat filled her again and again and the bed seemed to fall away beneath her, and she felt a weightless, all-consuming pleasure and an almost unbearable heat. She rolled on top of him and pinned his arms to the bed, and he was gasping her name and gripping her _so tightly_ , and words and language left her as she tangled and untangled around him again and again, in this place where the only thing that existed was the urgent merging of their bodies and a wellspring of glorious thirst engulfing her in desires spoken and fulfilled.

* * *

  
  
  
“You’re moving too fast.”  
  
“I’ve been doing this for all of five minutes, you’ve had a few dozen lifetimes to learn.”  
  
“More than a few dozen.”  
  
“Yes, yes, my mortal mind can’t grasp your level of ancient-ness. I should still be able to juggle a crystal ball.”  
  
Lying on her back and using Jareth’s chest as a pillow, Sarah was balancing a crystal on the back side of her left hand and trying to accomplish the simple trick ( _not so simple at all, really_ ) of flipping it over to the other side, as she’d seen him do so many times. They were on the floor just beside the bed, where there was, thankfully, a very soft fur rug. Sarah’s brow was furrowed with concentration as she carefully positioned her hands above her head and tried to make the crystal ball dance.  
  
She idly wondered if they should put their clothes back on and decided that no, that was a terrible idea.  
  
Jareth threaded his ungloved fingers through hers and expertly balanced the crystal in her palm, then shifted it to the back of his hand as if it were attached with a magnet. “It’s all patience, dearest.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Appropriate, since you would try the patience of a saint.”  
  
“You won’t be able to do it if you let frustration get the better of you.”  
  
“Fine, fine. Mindful breaths, cleansing thoughts.”  
  
She let him guide her hands in loops and circles, feeling a slightly softer version of that delightful warm, melting sensation that seemed to radiate from each of his fingers. She was glad he’d waited a while to take the gloves off, because as he’d warned her, the effect had been…  
  
She blushed at the memory and almost dropped the crystal.    
  
That first coming together had ended with both of them wrapped tightly around each other, sweating and tangled in a mess of pillows and sheets, but it was only a moment before Jareth was crawling on top of her again, his face positively radiant with replenished need, and she found herself returning his kisses with equal fervor.  
  
And then he’d smirked at her and removed each glove with his teeth, tossing them aside.  
  
She’d laughed at him. “Are the magic hands supposed to frighten me?”  
  
“Not frighten you, precious,” he’d whispered, kissing her neck as one hand closed over her breast and she gasped. “Just…humble you.”  
  
The sensation was like…heat, and electricity, but really it was just pure, near-orgasmic pleasure that melted over her skin like caramel, and when his hand moved to her lips and she sucked his fingers it was like drinking liquid joy.  
  
“Gods and _fuck_ , what _is_ this….”  
  
He chuckled and ran his other hand all over her, leaving a burning trail of sensation over everything he touched. And then his hand slipped tantalizingly lower, and his smile was utterly wicked as his fingers moved between her legs…  
  
…and the world went momentarily black as she gasped and screamed and gripped his shoulders with her fingernails hard enough to draw blood, because it felt like she was being kissed and licked and penetrated and suckled all at the same time, and that liquid joy shot through every vein in her body until her limbs seemed disconnected from her torso, and she felt certain that her physical self must be disintegrating, but she didn’t care, and when she climaxed he did have to hold her down, just as she’d asked him to, because her flailing body surely would have fallen out of the bed otherwise.  
  
After that second lengthy interlude in the bed there had been some time spent in the windowsill ( _not the most comfortable, but a lovely view_ ), and then on the chair ( _which inspired a bit of creative positioning_ ), and then up against the wall ( _that was fun_ ). She wasn’t sure how much he had reordered time or how long she’d been in this room, because the night outside hadn’t ended, but she felt sure that enough time must have passed for the sun to rise and set again. At one point, with her back pressed against the wall, one of Jareth’s arms holding her up effortlessly as his mouth devoured her neck, she’d gasped that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do this.  
  
“I have faith in you, precious,” he gasped back, reaching up to push wet strands of hair out of her face. “Besides, I still haven’t given you everything that you told me you needed…”  
  
_Note to self: be careful what you whisper in a Goblin King’s ear, because you will get_ all _of it. Multiple times._  
  
He was the one who finally fell asleep, ( _and fair enough, really, given that he’d gotten a_ bit _more of a workout than she had_ ), sprawled on his back on the rug on the floor, limbs tangled with pillows and sheets, her head resting comfortably on his chest. She’d fallen asleep soon after, and when she woke his breathing was still slow and rhythmic, a wonderfully peaceful expression on his face.  
  
_I am spoiled for life, and he knows it._  
  
She sat up and stared at the lines of his face and torso, reaching out to trace a finger over his collarbone and the taut muscle of his arm, willing to memory the way that the light made his hair and skin gleam, the dark richness of his eyelashes, the soft outline of his mouth. When her hand reached up to smooth his hair his own hand shot up and grabbed her wrist, and she jumped.  
  
He smiled up at her, his eyes still heavy-lidded with desire but also half asleep, a mixture that she loved. “I never took advantage of you when you were helpless, Sarah.”  
  
She rolled her eyes at him. “I doubt you’ve ever been completely helpless.”  
  
He plucked a crystal out of the air and casually wove it between his hands. “You’re swiftly changing that.”  
  
She smiled and reached for the crystal, which he held just out of reach. “Let me try,” she said.  
  
“Try what?”  
  
“What you’re doing.”  
  
He laughed. “I’ve had countless lifetimes of boredom to perfect this bit of silliness, why would you want to bother with it?”  
  
She finally succeeded in snatching the ball away from him and lay back against the side of his chest, carefully maneuvering the crystal between her hands. “Because my puny mortal body needs a brief distraction.”  
  
He laughed, which jostled her body slightly, leading her to almost drop the crystal. “Don’t laugh. Or breathe.”  
  
He managed to sigh without moving. “You are impossible.”  
  
“And you,” she muttered, eyes focused on the crystal, “would not have me any other way.”  
  
Back in the present she smiled as she stared up at their intertwined fingers moving in the flickering candlelight, the crystal dancing between them. She gently maneuvered it into her own hands and it immediately began to fall, and Jareth reached out to catch it before it could hit her in the face.  
  
She took it back and started moving it from hand to hand again, and he sighed. “Sarah, you’re going to break your nose.”  
  
“I will _not_ break anyth—“ Right at that moment the crystal slipped off of her outstretched fingers and landed with a thunk on her chin. “Ow.”  
  
He laughed and scooped up the crystal as it rolled down the curve of her upper body. “Might I suggest that we take a study break?”  
  
She grabbed the crystal back from him and returned to rolling it between her fingers. “Yes, you might suggest that.”  
  
He grabbed for the crystal and she stretched her arms just out of his reach. “Might I _insist_ that we take a study break?”  
  
She felt a prickling in the air around the crystal and it floated out of her hands into his. “You _cheat_.” She flipped over onto her stomach and reached for the crystal. He restrained her with his other hand, holding the crystal high above their heads and leaning down to kiss her bruised chin.  
  
“Only cheating to protect your lovely face, precious.”  
  
She lunged forward, but he held her back, shifting the crystal from the back of his hand to the front as easily as if it were weightless. And smirking while he did it.  
  
“Now you’re just rubbing it in.”  
  
“Of course I am.” He made the crystal disappear and pulled her on top of him, trailing kisses over her neck and shoulders. “We’ve already established that I have no power over you, precious,” he tickled her stomach and she squirmed, “so you can at least let me be the superior juggler.”  
  
His hands moved more insistently down her back and she moaned. “Not…fair…”  
  
He kissed her gently and then with more intensity. “Nothing ever is.”  
  
There was another short sleep after that encounter, and when Sarah woke up she felt hungry, which was how they found themselves back in the bed, sitting across from each other and eating the cheese and wine from the bedside table as Jareth described the strangest things anyone had ever wished away.  
  
“A car,” he finally said, taking a sip of wine.  
  
Sarah blinked. “A car? People can wish away inanimate objects?”  
  
“Apparently so.” Jareth fed her another piece of cheese. “In this case I believe the young man in question couldn’t get the car to start and wished it away in frustration. I would have offered him the chance to run the labyrinth to reclaim it, of course, but the goblins dismantled it in a matter of minutes and turned most of the pieces into furniture and headgear.” He smiled with genuine delight. “His threats were colorful.”  
  
Sarah idly reminded herself never to wish her computer away, no matter how many times it might crash.  
  
Jareth’s eyes momentarily took on a faraway cast. “Truly remarkable, what mortals wish for—or wish away—in their most desperate moments. Suffice it to say that no one has ever wished for world peace. Or for the goblins to take away all the murderers and thieves.”  
  
Sarah wrapped her legs around Jareth’s waist so that she was sitting on top of his knees. “What would you wish for, then?”  
  
“Me?” He trailed one finger along her earlobe and down her neck, and she let her head rest on his shoulder. “A strange question, and one I’d genuinely never thought to answer—I’m the wish _granter_ , not the wisher.”  
  
“Humor me.”  
  
His hand trailed lower. “Well, there are at least one or two more challenging positions we haven’t attempted—“  
  
She playfully smacked his hand away. “I was thinking of a less carnal sort of wish.”  
  
“Says the naked girl with her legs wrapped around me.” She started to move away and he pulled her tighter against him. “That was _not_ a complaint.”  
  
She laughed. “Indulge my mortal curiosity, please.” She lifted her head from his shoulder to look into his eyes. “What would the Goblin King wish for, in a world where he was the wisher and not the wish-granter?”  
  
He sighed and ran a hand through his (now quite disheveled) hair, taking another sip of wine. Sarah waited, her hands making idle trails up and down his back.  
  
When he finally spoke he seemed surprised by his answer. “An ending,” he said.  
  
She felt a pain in her chest. “An ending? You mean…death?”  
  
“Yes.” He smiled at the pained look on her face and kissed her cheek. “But not in the sense that you would understand it, precious. I am not melancholy. I do not despise my existence. I simply wish to know the sensation of mortality, of knowing that my every breath is moving me inevitably toward some end point, and thus that every breath and every action that I take has meaning, because my existence is finite.”  
  
His words made Sarah felt lightheaded. “Is that really what death is to you?”  
  
He sighed. “Mortal history is so full of stories of people desperate to gain immortality. But if you read the stories closely, it almost never ends well. Their existence loses all meaning.” He downed the last of the wine and set the glass on the table. “I simply want what mortals take for granted: a sense of urgency. The idea that there are things I must do now, or at least soon, because at some point the end will come for me, and I will not want my life to have been in vain.”  
  
“And perhaps…I wish for a glorious ending. Or at least a poetic one, one befitting a monarch. More “he stood on the parapets and removed his crown as the world burned,” less “he granted wishes, and he berated the goblins, and every day stretched out across eternity, the same as the last.”  
  
Jareth’s gaze had gone distant, and the look in his eyes—of what she imagined he was seeing off in some faraway, nonexistent future—made her heart ache. “I…never thought of it that way, I suppose,” she said. “It’s a gift, mortality, however much we might complain about it.”  
  
“Well, complaining is a beloved mortal pastime.”  
  
She smiled and gently disentangled herself from him, though his face looked pained and he tried to pull her back. Wrapping a sheet around herself, she went to stand by the window, where a slightly crooked moon and a collection of brilliant stars shone in a sky that looked painted. As before, she was never sure how much of any of it was real, but found that she didn’t really care, because the feelings and the sensations were as real as anything.  
  
She looked down at her body, which certainly bore the memory of everything they’d done.  
  
_Yeah, I’d say all of that was real._  
  
She gazed out at the moon and stars, sensing the irony in the fact that she didn’t want this to end ( _but that it must_ ) and that what Jareth wanted _most_ in the world was an ending.    
  
She felt him come up behind her and wrap his arms around her shoulders, pulling her into the warmth of his chest. She smiled and leaned back against him.  
  
“I could…write you an ending.”  
  
She could tell that he was smiling when he spoke. “Could you, now?”  
  
“It wouldn’t be the same, I know. But it would be something you could hold onto. A tangible idea of an ending.” She turned around and let the sheet fall to the floor, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. “It might be a comfort.”  
  
He stared at her for a long time and reached out to trace the outline of her face with his finger, as though memorizing it. “Yes, it would be a comfort.”  
  
She suddenly wrapped her arms around him fiercely and kissed his face and neck, and he laughed and lifted her effortlessly into his arms, moving back toward the bed. “Aiming to make me forget about death, precious?”  
  
She murmured a “yes” as she kissed his mouth with particular fierceness. “You may want an ending,” she gasped, laughing as he laid her down, “but I’d be grateful if you’d reorder time for just a bit longer.”  
  
He pinned her hands above her head and she moaned with the pleasant weight of his body on top of hers, savoring the feeling of every curve and crevice fitting together in perfect alignment. “Demanding girl,” he whispered.  
  
“I learned from the best,” she whispered back, laughing as he bit her ear.  
  
He gave her a long, slow kiss while both his hands trailed a hot, intensely pleasurable trail over her breasts and down her stomach. “Right, then.” He rolled over so that she was straddling him, smiling as she leaned over to cover his face with the dark cascade of her hair, her hips shifting against him until he gasped. “Make me feel alive again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! That one took a while to tweak, and heaven knows it's not perfect, but I think it'll do for now. Incidentally, my favorite Labyrinth fandom example of what Jareth tastes / smells like is "the ozone smell of summer lightning" (courtesy of Pika-la-Cynique in The Tshirt Incident). I went with something seasonal as well, maybe because "cinnamon" reminds me too much of pumpkin spice lattes and "leather" seemed inappropriate if (for once) he wasn't actually wearing leather. 
> 
> I went back and forth over whether to write an epilogue, and then said epilogue sort of wrote itself, so it'll be up soon. :)


	10. Epilogue

ACT II  
SCENE FIVE  
  
JARETH _stands alone center stage, his back to the audience, staring off into the distance. His hair is grayer than when we last saw him, his cloak more worn. On the scrim we see projections of moving colors and shapes that indicate fire and the advancement of great numbers of people and / or animals. Sound effect: shouts, the clashing of metal on metal, crackling fire._  
  
_From stage left_ SIR DIDYMUS _enters, his armor, sword, and shield battle-stained, his whiskers matted with dirt and blood. He watches the king for a beat before speaking._  
  
DIDYMUS: Your Majesty, they’ve breached the gates.  
  
_A pause._ JARETH _lifts up a crystal and looks into it._  
  
JARETH: Thank you, Sir Knight. I’ve been following their movements.  
  
DIDYMUS: We can spirit thee out of the castle through the tunnels, your Majesty, the longest ones extend into the forest—  
  
JARETH: No.  
  
DIDYMUS: Majesty, I beg forgive my presumption, but they will take thee prisoner—  
  
JARETH: No, they won’t, Sir Knight.  
  
JARETH _reaches inside his cloak and produces a small vial of liquid. He sits at the table downstage left and gestures for_ SIR DIDYMUS _to join him._  
  
JARETH: Fancy a drink?  
  
DIDYMUS: ( _resigned, but still fierce_ ) If your Majesty would allow it, I would prefer to meet my end in battle.  
  
JARETH: ( _pouring himself a glass of wine_ ) It is fortunate, then, that so many just outside those doors will be happy to give you that privilege.  
  
DIDYMUS: ( _bowing_ ) I take my leave, then, your Majesty. (He begins to exit stage right and pauses.) It has been an honor to serve thee, your Majesty.  
  
JARETH: ( _raising his glass_ ) You have always gone above and beyond your duty, Sir Knight. I thank you.  
   
_Exit_ SIR DIDYMUS _to the sound of battle._ JARETH _holds the vial of liquid up for a moment, then uncaps it and pours the contents into his glass. He drinks the wine in one swig and then stands up. He removes his cloak and gloves and produces another crystal ball, gazing into it as he moves to the castle window upstage left. He sits on the window ledge, looking out beyond the castle walls and then back to the crystal, caressing it fondly as the sounds of battle increase in volume and the lights slowly transition to red, then fade to black._  
  
END OF PLAY

* * *

  
  
Sarah realized she was afraid to look up as she heard Jareth read the last words. Her hands shook, gripping the edges of her jacket tightly, her throat dry.  
  
She’d read those words a hundred times before, of course—at home in front of her computer, in her scriptwriters’ workshop. She’d seen them performed by two very talented actors during the rehearsal process. She knew them by heart, just as she knew the words of almost every play she’d ever written by heart.  
  
Hearing them read directly by the one who’d inspired them, though, was something else altogether.  
  
She was staring at him through the vanity mirror on her desk, which she had never been able to part with, though it had been several years since she’d passed through it. Jareth never seemed to age, of course, though as always she had wondered if his face would look gaunt when she saw him. She wondered if years felt like moments to him ( _but maybe they didn’t, when he knew that there was no end in sight_ ).  
  
He wore his usual tight leggings, thigh-high black boots, a black shirt that hung open at the front, and a cream-colored cloak embroidered with a pattern that resembled feathers. He was surrounded by what looked like a medieval city, where people were moving in the background, a brilliant sun gleaming over a clear sky, cobblestone streets and stone buildings with turrets and arched roofs stretching off into the distance.  
  
He was lounging on the edge of a fountain, which he managed to make look like a throne. When he read out the final stage directions he closed the small Samuel French paperback she’d given him and was silent for a long time.  
  
_He hates it. Shit, he hates it._  
  
Jareth finally sighed, his expression pained. “Really, Sarah. You couldn’t have had me meet my end by slaying a dragon?”  
  
She laughed and felt warmth rush through her. “Maybe the Goblin Kingdom has unlimited funds, Jareth, but Broadway theaters don’t. Not quite sure how we’d stage that without spending a fortune.”  
  
“I at least could have fought a duel. Saved a princess.”  
  
“Have you ever done either of those things?”  
  
“Of course not.” He smirked. “My sword skills are fairly useless, and the princesses usually have to save _themselves_ from _me_ , present company included.”  
  
“Well then, there you are.” She smiled and approached the mirror. “I wanted to keep things somewhat true to life.”    
  
Jareth flipped idly through the script. “I’m sure your friends were happy to know they made appearances. Especially Didymus, with his honorable death.”  
  
“Well, I must give Didymus a bit of credit as a co-author, though he wouldn’t allow me to put his name on the credits page. And he was also disappointed that there were no dragons for him to slay.”  
  
Jareth flipped to the end of the book, and she could tell he was perusing the final scene again. “How long did it take my treasonous subjects to reconcile with you?”  
  
She sighed. “Probably not as long as I deserved. I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror apologizing in different ways. Hoggle was the most difficult, but I managed to lure him back with jewelry.”  
  
Jareth snorted. “I shall sleep better at night knowing that the labyrinth’s first line of defense can be breached with a shiny bracelet.” He flipped to the middle of the book. “You made him rather more heroic and selfless in this telling.”  
  
“Well, he _is_ heroic. In his own way.” She smiled, enjoying the sight of Jareth intently reading what she’d written.  “And I hope your ending will still bring you comfort, dragons or no.”  
  
He nodded, not looking at her. “It will.”  
  
He rose from the edge of the fountain and placed his hand on the mirror against hers, and she felt a tingling warmth.  
  
“I must say, it took you long enough to write.”  
  
She shrugged. “These things happen when they happen. I’ve been a bit busy.”  
  
“So you have.” He studied her. “You look different.”  
  
“Unlike you, I age.”  
  
“I prefer your hair longer.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Never heard that one before.”  
  
It wasn’t just age, Sarah knew, though of course that was a part of it. Her hair was shorter now, layered to just below her shoulders, with a few streaks of bright blue running through it. She wore a short leather jacket that Lori Meeker had given her after they’d finished the (very successful) run of The Retreat, a bright red blouse, and tight jeans tucked into thigh-high boots.  
  
From the waist down, at least, she could see where a lot of the influence came from.  
  
He backed away slightly, folding his arms across his chest. “Your apartment seems quiet. Has that annoying fellow moved out completely, then?”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you bother asking questions like that when we both know you see almost everything in your crystals.”  
  
“Yes, well, not everything I saw made sense. You were no longer lovers, but you were still living together.”  
  
“Because it was amicable. It still is. We’re very good friends.”  
  
Jareth threw up his hands. “What is the point of ending a love affair if it doesn’t end in fire and chaos?”  
  
“Makes it easier to share custody of the dog, for one thing.”  
  
Jareth sighed. “Mortals continue to bewilder me. Though I will give—Christopher, was it?—respect for his persistence, especially after all those times he made a complete fool of himself in front of you.”  
  
Sarah smirked. “You mean the times that goblins just happened to shove him into a pond, steal his bicycle out from under him, and make my faucet explode in his face?”  
  
Jareth’s face was comically shocked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Oh, come off it, you _mzhrashtej_. Goblins aren’t that good at hiding, and I know they didn’t act on their own.”  
  
Jareth’s eyes widened. “I may have taught you Goblin, Sarah, but I most definitely did not teach you that word.”  
  
“ _I have other sources of knowledge_ ,” she said in Goblin.  
  
He sighed. “You take far too much pleasure in gaining power over me.”  
  
“Only a little.” She put her hands on her hips. “At least you weren’t especially persistent with the pranks you played on Christopher.”  
  
Jareth turned away and plucked a crystal from the air, weaving it back and forth. “At some point I acknowledged that you were happy, though how that was possible with such an ordinary man I couldn’t fathom.”  
  
“Very mature of you.” She smirked. “Very…selfless.”  
  
He looked offended, as she’d known he would. His smile was razor-thin. “It’s a shame neither of you wanted to have children. I looked forward to you wishing at least one of them away.”  
  
_Ohhhh, we’re going there, are we?_ She returned the thin smile. “Well, I’m a bit of a second mother to Miguel and Nick’s twins, and I seem to have refrained from wishing _them_ away so far.” She stealthily picked up a glass ball that had been sitting on her desk.  
  
“A pity. Twins would be a novelty here. Young Toby certainly enjoyed his time with the goblins, I should pay him a—“ He went slack-jawed when he saw what she was doing.  
  
She forced herself not to grin too broadly as she wove the glass ball back and forth between her hands. “Pay him a visit? Isn’t Toby a bit old to be turned into a goblin?”  
  
Jareth’s face had gone white. “That is… _not_ fair. At all.”  
  
She raised the ball above her head as she flipped it back and forth. “Ah, but what’s your basis for comparison?”  
  
If it had been possible for steam to come out of the Goblin King’s ears, she felt sure that’s what would have happened. Instead, his eyes simply narrowed until she thought they would disappear into his head. “You are purposefully provoking and _defying_ me, toward what end I know not, but rest assured that—“  
  
Of course the glass ball chose exactly that moment to fall from her hands directly onto her nose.  
  
She let out a little yelp of pain and opened her eyes to see an expression of pure, unadulterated joy on Jareth’s face. She rubbed her nose, where she was sure a bruise was already forming. “You don’t have to look so—“  
  
“Shhhh.” He held up a hand. “I am committing this moment to memory by replaying it in my mind again and again.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “My God, it improves with every viewing.”  
  
She laughed, and then she couldn’t stop laughing, at her never-ending attempts at coolness that almost always failed, at the way she never missed a chance to one-up an old rival, and at Jareth, for the childlike glee that her slip-ups seemed to inspire in him. He watched her and smiled a slightly less self-satisfied smile.  
  
“Fuck.” She wiped a tear away. “I’ve missed you.”  
  
His smile faltered, and she saw a flicker of that ache in his eyes that hinted at things she knew he’d never say. “I assume that’s why you’re here, after such a long absence.”  
  
She heard the accusation in his voice. “I haven’t been completely absent.”  
  
“No, but you haven’t passed through the mirror in quite a while. Not since His Ordinariness came into your life.”  
  
“Monogamy, Jareth. Some mortals are into it. And we both know that I couldn’t have passed through that mirror without getting into trouble.”  
  
Jareth lay back on the edge of the fountain, crossed his legs, and very, very slowly removed one glove, holding his hand up in the sunlight. “Sarah, Sarah.” He flexed his fingers and had the gall to _lick_ one of them, very slowly. “I’m not _that_ irresistible.”  
  
She knew she was blushing. “Right. I may speak your language and be able to juggle a bit, but you’ve still got plenty of power over me in that arena.”  
  
He turned to look at her. “I’m sorry, precious, could you say that again?”  
  
“What, the part about me speaking Goblin and being able to—“  
  
“No, no.” He smiled. “The part about me having power over you.”  
  
She shook her head and pressed her hand against the mirror again. He approached and entwined his fingers with hers, making the mirror shimmer.  
  
“ _You are still the star’s fire in which I would happily burn_ ,” she said in Goblin. “Happy?”  
  
He nodded and squeezed her hand. He did seem genuinely happy. “You look beautiful, by the way.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“The blue in your hair’s a bit much, though.”  
  
She laughed. “A bit much? _You_ are telling _me_ that something is _a bit much_?”  
  
“Come now, Sarah.” He stepped back and gave his cloak a particularly dramatic flourish. “I’m a _monarch_. I have a reputation to uphold.”    
  
“And so do I. Blue hair and the occasional tattoo helps to hide the fact that I’m a complete square, at least by New York theater standards.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow. “You have _tattoos_?”  
  
“Just two. Rather small.”  
  
He smirked. “Where?”  
  
She smirked back. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”  
  
He put his glove back on and crossed his arms. “Is that why you’re here, then? Mortal lover’s gone, ready to dust off the immortal lover you’ve got in storage?”  
  
“Somehow I doubt you’ve been in _storage_ ,” she said. “You’re looking fairly healthy, at least.”  
  
“Yes, well, a steady stream of ‘I need a ballroom fantasy’ and ‘I wish the goblins would come and take my impossible parakeet away’ has kept me from shriveling into nothing.” He fingered the cover of her script. “And yes, there have been a few doe-eyed young ladies wandering the labyrinth recently, though none have particularly struck my fancy.”  
  
She smiled. “That’s a shame.”  
  
“Is it really, Sarah?”  
  
“Yes.” _Mostly_. “I wouldn’t begrudge you a bit of happiness.”  
  
“Ugh, Sarah, your altruism is making my head ache.”  
  
She laughed. “Then maybe I should start telling you what I need.”  
  
His faced perked up at that. “Indeed. I was curious about what this,” he gestured at his surroundings, “might signify.”  
  
She folded her arms. “I suppose I need…a bit of an adventure.”  
  
He smiled and approached the mirror, reaching through it to grip her hand. “Tell me more, precious.”  
  
She cleared her throat. “I need to go on an adventure. I need a bit of danger. Maybe even some dragons.” She smiled, squeezing his hand. “And I need to show you my tattoos.”  
  
He grinned. “Anything else?”  
  
“Pull me through this mirror and we can figure it out together.”  
  
Jareth gripped her hand tightly and kissed it. The light that danced in his eyes was mesmerizing.  
  
“Demanding girl.”  
  
He pulled her through the mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s all she wrote. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who read, kudo'd, bookmarked, and commented, it really has meant the world to me.
> 
> This story has been taking up a huge amount of space in my brain for the past two months, to the point where I was writing and rewriting it in my head while I was administering final exams (shhh, don’t tell my bosses) and acting out dialogue in front of my own bathroom mirror and on crowded Tokyo trains (to the amusement and / or horror of my fellow commuters). To give credit where credit is due:
> 
> A huge thank you to K.L. Morgan, whose uber-brilliant A Forfeit of Dreams led me down a rabbit hole of shockingly good Labyrinth fanfic including Subtilior’s Advent and Erlkönig and Pika-la-Cynique’s Girls Next Door webcomic and The Tshirt Incident: Retaliation and Escalation. (Girls Next Door is over on Deviant Art, you'll need to click on the GND folder and scroll WAY down to the bottom if you want to start at the beginning.) 
> 
> 2\. A very special thank you to Pika’s drawing "Games of Patience," (in her "Labyrinth Stuffs" folder on Deviant Art), which heavily inspired the ending of this story and which was like a lighthouse in a storm while I was writing. I knew that I wanted to get there somehow, just wasn’t sure quite how it would happen.
> 
> 3\. Another big thank you to The Tshirt Incident: Retaliation & Escalation for showing me how to walk that thin tightrope between R-rated and NC-17-rated sex scenes. (I’m all in for the NC-17 stuff as well, but I didn’t think that level of explicitness really suited this story.)
> 
> 4\. Thanks to Louise Hay’s book Mirror Work, of course, and to the therapist who recommended it. In all honesty the approach didn’t really work for me (I share Sarah’s cynicism about self-help and positive thinking, which is probably an indication that I could benefit from it), but a lot of other approaches did (like writing this story and writing down “conversations” with the different facets of my personality).
> 
> UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that Louise Hay caused a lot of harm in the 1980s with her approach to AIDS and other illnesses (by basically arguing that certain illnesses were the fault of the sufferer and could be cured through positive thinking). You can read more about that in David Groff's article for Slate, "How Louise Hay's Spiritual Pseudoscience Harmed a Generation of Gay Men." In truth, I didn't really like her Mirror Work book--she makes a lot of VERY dubious claims in that one as well. Still, I felt that the basic concept (of looking into a mirror and being honest with yourself, and writing about it) was helpful, or at the very least harmless. 
> 
> 5\. Thanks to these songs, which became a sort of Mirror Work playlist. Some of them have lines or themes that reminded me of the story, and I tended to play them on repeat, and some were just a good jam to dance around my living room to while I had writer’s block. 
> 
> Disclosure featuring Lorde, Magnets  
> Lana del Rey, Religion  
> Jace Everett, Bad Things  
> Bassboosa, Succumb  
> Naomi Greenwald, Evan Williams  
> Girls’ Generation, Mr. Taxi  
> Nine Inch Nails, Sunspots
> 
> 6\. Finally, again, a huge thank you to everyone who read this. I wrote it for myself, for the joy of it, and to exorcise a few personal demons, but if it spoke to you in some way, or if it just gave you a bit of happiness or titillation, that’s awesome.
> 
> \---------------
> 
> UPDATE on 8/20/2017: Wow, this is my first story to reach 100 kudos! Thanks so much!


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